Kosovo election commission annuls 3,782 votes from Serbia

The appeals panel, ruling on an appeal by the Nisma-AKR-PD coalition, ordered the Central Election Commission to delete those votes from the total. “The boxes with the votes from Serbia were brought in by certain persons and not sent by mail which means that the conditions defined by law were not met,” the panel ruled, adding that the boxes did not have a postal seal. The boxes with the votes from Serbia were brought to a post office in Pristina by two men who the Central Election Commission said were not empowered to handle the ballots.  

The Kosovo Post Office confirmed that the boxes were handed in at post office six on November 4, 2019, by Dejan Pavicevic, Belgrade’s liaison officer in Pristina, and another person who did not identify himself. “The ballots were in A4 size boxes with 20 envelopes in each. We counted 3,782. The envelopes from Serbia did not have Serbian postal seals,” the statement said.  

The Belgrade-backed Serb List, which won all ten parliament seats reserved for the Kosovo Serb community, said that the authorities in Pristina “decided to annul the votes when it became clear that they all went to the Serb List”.

“The decision not to allow displaced Serbs the right to vote on who is to represent their interests and fight for their return is politically motivated and has no basis in law. Especially if we know that the votes of the displaced were always brought in the same way but this time it was obviously necessary to show the displace that they are not welcome and that as Serbs they can’t count on their rights being respected,” the statement said and recalled that “the Serb List still has all 10 seats based on the democratically expressed will of the Serb people”.