"While these people are in power - there is nothing of the correct electoral roll."
This is how the MP of the Green-Left Front said in one sentence Jelena Jerinić explains to "Vreme" why her parliamentary group will not vote for the adoption of the changes of the Law on the Unified Voter List, which is on the agenda in the Serbian Parliament.
At the beginning of this November, MPs are considering amendments to the law, Doc Dijana Hrka is on hunger strike in front of the parliament building.
The government with handcuffs on its hands
In previous months and years, this very law was the foundation on which the spears of democratic processes in Serbia broke. The regime has a problem because it undertook to fix this law in alleged cooperation with the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the European Union, as well as the European Commission itself. which just adopted an extremely negative report on Serbia's progress.
That is why the President of the State, Aleksandar Vučić, stated in October that he himself "asked" the Prime Minister and the President of the Assembly to "accelerate as much as possible" and to fulfill everything related to voter lists and ODIHR laws.
"Everything they want, fulfill them, everything that came to their mind, and that did not come to mind for any other country, fulfill them, that's my request. Literally everything that comes to their mind, what seems humiliating to you, and fulfill it," Vučić said, adding that it is necessary to show that Serbia is on the European path, but also that there is no fear of the will of the people.
Behind this statement by Vučić is not a desire to cooperate with dissenters, but an "attempt to abuse the opposition and civil society in Serbia", claims Jelena Jerinić, because the government is trying to show Europe that it is ready to cooperate.
"That is why it is very important for them now that this proposal to amend the law is adopted," explains Jerinić. "Although the proposal is essentially similar to what Crta proposed, we do not want to release them from criminal responsibility by voting for the law. Because we know that, whatever is adopted, they will not respect it on the ground. The simplest explanation - if the SNS and SPS were to start implementing the amended law on voter lists, they would directly handcuff themselves."
Dead people and ghosts
The previous decade in Serbia was marked by brutal violations of basic rights, and above all, abuse of voter lists. Thus, for example, the Belgrade elections in 2023 spawned an epidemic of phantom voters, and some observers claimed that their votes were crucial for winning the election.
It turned out that the regime is moving people from one municipality to another in order to get elections where they need them, so in the municipality of Savski venac, 154 voters were registered in one building, while there were only 121 in the republican elections before that. The owner of this building is Vladimir Mandić, a member of the Main Board of the Serbian Progressive Party, a former handball player who is said to be organizing teams of beaters for the illegal camp in Pionirski Park and other needs. Here, the list of tenants included Marjanović Sretko, the president of the municipality of Sokolac, and Milović Daliborka, who is a delegate of Republika Srpska in the BiH Assembly. In another house in the Old Town, there were 60 people on the list, and the tenants did not know 35 of them. Most of the people on the list were citizens of municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The illegality of the whole operation is that people began to call in Serbia who found out that unknown tenants had registered at their address. and "Time" was almost written about such phantoms. The entire scheme shows that these criminals could not register at numerous home addresses of citizens without the knowledge of the apartment owners, so it is assumed, and experts claim, that the entire operation of illegal registration of addresses could not have been carried out without the knowledge of the MUP.
On the voter list of the previous decade, there were also dead people who easily voted in the elections, as well as those registered at transformer stations and sheds.
"Even the current Law on the voter list is not that bad, so if the government respected it, they would certainly not win the elections," adds Jerinić. "We, of course, support the improvement of the law, but not the appearance of cooperation with civil society and the opposition. In another country, this would be the focus."
The message of the Green-Left Front for the regime is that they should first step down from power, and that the question is whether we will need changes to this law then.
