Electoral Commission, Most Parties Silent on Claims of Gov't Gathering Signatures for Opposition

Gathering Signatures (Beta/Dragan Gojic)

Most parties, but also the Serbian Electoral Commission on June 8 declined to comment on allegations made by Enough Is Enough movement leader Sasa Radulovic that the ruling Serbian Progressive Party had been gathering signatures for participation in the elections for almost all opposition parties, while some dismissed those claims as untrue.

United Democratic Serbia and the People's Bloc in their reply to BETA claim that they collected signatures throughout Serbia on their own, while the Movement of Free Citizens, New Party, Enough Is Enough, the Metla (Broom) 2020 movement and the Serbian Progressive Party did not answer the question about how they had gathered the required signatures, i.e. whether there had been that kind of "cooperation" between the authorities and the opposition.

The Electoral Commission asked BETA to send its questions via e-mail, but after that no one from the body made any statements.

Enough Is Enough leader Sasa Radulovic said late on June 7 that the Progressive Party had gathered signatures for all the opposition tickets, except for the one he was heading. He added that he had information that the Movement of Free Citizens had collected more than 5,000 signatures in New Belgrade for its general election ticket, but was not taking part in the local elections in the Belgrade municipality.