CRTA: ODHIR Report on Elections "A Serious Slap for the Regime" in Serbia

CRTA (Photo: Beta/AMIR HAMZAGIC)

Program director of the Center for Research, Transparency and Responsibility (CRTA) Rasa Nedeljkov said on Feb. 29 that the ODIHR's report on elections in December "are a serious slap for the regime, and a foundation of sorts for citizens so that they can ask institutions to do their job."

Nedeljkov told N1 TV, that the ODHIR's report unambiguously made it clear that all of the evidence and assessments corresponded to the assessments voiced by CRTA's observer mission. "The report treats the issue of voter rolls, migrations and abuses and questions the democratic character of calling local elections in one-third of municipalities. There is nothing in the report that justifies the serious manipulation that continues on the part of representatives of the authorities that the elections in Serbia were as clean as a whistle," Nedeljkov said.

Nedeljkov stressed that for some time now he had believed that elections in Serbia were seriously flawed, and that the authorities had fully met four priority and 14 lower priority recommendations since 2012, which, he said "says that the state has chronically not been tending to the key problems of the electoral process." He stressed that a Freedom House report also showed this, which states that Serbia has become Europe's leader in the fall of democracy.