Nemanja Nenadic (Beta/Milan Obradovic)
On Dec. 3, program director of non-governmental Transparency Serbia Nemanja Nenadic said that voting conditions in Serbia today are worse than at the last general elections, in 2023. This, he said, was evidenced both by the June local elections in Zajecar and Kosjeric, and the Nov. 30 local vote in Negotin, Mionica and Secanj.
“Everything that was bad [in 2023] was now worse in Negotin, Mionica and Secanj,” Nenadic told the RTS public broadcaster.
Any discussion of voting conditions in Serbia, he explained, should entail examining whether the country has fulfilled any of the key recommendations made by the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) – one of which was “separating the state from the [ruling] party, and the party from the state.”
In addition to this “symbolic” separation, Nenadic said, it is equally or perhaps more important to prevent the usage of public resources in campaigning.
“This time, we witnessed the massive use of [state resources], just like in Kosjeric and Zajecar. We again had the widespread employment of a public company in [Mionica, Negotin and Secanj] for paving local roads [ahead of the elections],” Nenadic concluded.
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