BIRODI: Constitution Violated in Election Campaign

Zoran Gavrilovic (BETAPHOTO/MILAN OBRADOVIC)

The local election campaign has been carried out in an environment contrary to the European Charter on Local Self-Government of the Council of Europe, the Constitution, laws and ODIHR recommendations, the Bureau for Social Research (BIRODI) assessed on May 30.

“The campaign for local elections in some of the self-government units in Serbia has been carried out in an environment that violated the European Charter on Local Self-Government, as well as the Constitution of Serbia, which guarantees local self-government units autonomy from the republic government, which means that public officials from the republic level cannot be participants or guarantors of the promises given during the (local) election campaign,” the statement reads.

They cited the example of the head of the Serbian Progressive Party’s election ticket being the president of the Republic, which is in violation of both the Constitution of Serbia and the Law on the president of the Republic, and of the fifth recommendation of ODIHR about the need to separate public and party functions.

“During the last two weeks of the election campaign, the media domination of the authorities and the ruling party in central news broadcasts of television stations with national coverage and N1 was 8:1 in favor of the authorities. They were presented extremely positively and depicted as flawless, with zero negative seconds, which violated the Rules on the protection of human rights in the field of media service provision. In the N1 news broadcasts, they were presented in a negative-neutral manner,” BIRODI stated.