Parliament Continues Debate on Electoral Law Amendments

Miroslav Petrasinovic (BETAPHOTO/Biljana Ljubisavljevic)

On May 13, the National Assembly of Serbia continued debating the amendments to four electoral laws proposed by ruling Serbian Progressive Party MP Miroslav Petrasinovic.

The day’s agenda includes draft amendments to the Law on Electing the President of State, the Local Elections Act, the Law on Electing Assembly Representatives and the Constitutional Court Act.

During the ongoing debate, oppositional Serbia Center MP Stefan Janic accused the government of “picking and choosing” which ODIHR recommendations to address and also criticized the proposal to allow citizens’ initiatives to form minority tickets, dubbing it “another attempt to circumvent the law.”

Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabic responded to Janic by stating the Progressives were against the proposal to allow one voter to support multiple tickets but that this was pushed by the EU.

Meanwhile MP Marinika Tepic of the oppositional Freedom and Justice Party told the Assembly that the entire debate is nothing but “playacting legislation for the purpose of preserving the rule of the Vucic brothers’ cartel, which knows that it can no longer win without manipulation, abusing government institutions and electoral fraud.”

“Now this cartel would like to use the recommendations of the ODIHR as a smoke screen to legalize its hitherto illegal activities. As usual, the format is quasi-European yet essentially mafia-like. While acting as if they are reforming they are actually creating a new system of sophisticated tools for manipulating elections,” Tepic stated.

According to her, the ODIHR’s goal is not what the author of the proposed amendments is covertly trying to achieve. The amendments, she claimed, “do not improve [Serbia’s] voting conditions but legalize voting fraud mechanisms,” Tepic concluded and underlined that her party’s MPs will not be supporting the amendments.

Leader of the People’s Movement of Serbia Miroslav Aleksic labeled the proposed amendments “cosmetic” and stated they do not resolve “key problems.” “Of the 25 recommendations the ODIHR made following [Serbia’s] 2023 parliamentary elections, you chose five which could have been adopted a month or two after the [ODIHR] report was published. Now you are trying to convince not only the Serbian public but also the international community [and] the ODIHR that you are trying to institute the rule of law in Serbia. You yourselves don’t believe that. Thanks to your government, election day in Serbia is more akin to a civil war than a celebration of democracy,” Aleksic concluded.