Get Going for Change Says Serbian Progressive Party Creates Fake Organizations for Observing Local Elections

Local Elections in Serbia, June 2 2024 (BETAPHOTO/MILOS MISKOV)

The Get Going for Change movement said on March 26 that fake observer organizations affiliated with the Serbian Progressive Party had appeared in 10 municipalities where local elections are scheduled for March 29.

"1,600 of them have been registered in Kula, which is over 40 per polling station, while 1,100 will observe the elections in Bajina Basta, which is around twenty per polling station," the movement said in a statement adding that a large number of citizens and organizations had applied for observing the electoral process, but that the Serbian Progressive Party "has created fake observer organizations in the spirit of its policy of copying and rendering things meaningless."

As an example the movement pointed to three organizations which it claims have been founded recently or altered: the Youth Perspective, the Institute for European Freedoms and the Election Watch Association of Serbia. It said that the Institute for European Freedoms was established on May 12, 2025, the Youth Perspective changed its statute on Oct. 27, 2205 while the Election Watch Association of Serbia was registered on Feb. 24, 2026 after elections were called.

The Get Going for Change stressed that there were irregularities in the organizations' documentation. "The Institute for European Freedoms was evidently in a hurry so its statute was written in a mixture of scripts, the headline in Cyrillic and the rest in the Latin Script, without basic information on the founding assembly," it said, adding that the statutes of some organizations were nearly identical. The movement also said that the persons engaged as observers included numerous activists and officials affiliated with the ruling Serbian Progressive Party but also the directors of public companies and employees in institutions.