SERBIA: EU on Election Fraud & more – 23rd Jan 2024

Dobar dan from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Serbia Update from the 23rd of January twenty twenty-four A quick summary of what's going down in Serbia.

The European Parliament held a plenary session debate on Wednesday the 17th about the aftermath of the Serbian parliamentary elections that took place on the 17th of December twenty twenty-three. After the elections, many official monitoring groups reported irregularities, so citizens and the opposition coalition Serbia Against Violence requested an investigation on the competent authorities. The news spread outside of Serbia to the EU, which heavily condemned the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS. The accusations against the SNS involve voter pressure, brutal smear campaigns against the opposition, registration of voters from abroad, among others.

On Tuesday the 16th, one day before the European Parliament session debate, thousands of Serbian citizens rallied in Belgrade to protest against SNS’s alleged electoral fraud. During the rally, one of the leading opposition figures Marinka Tepic, from the Party of Freedom and Justice, celebrated the European Parliament’s decision to discuss the election situation, adding that the world is now aware of the corrupt policies of president Vucic and the ruling SNS party. The protesters demanded that the government annul the December election results due to all the reported irregularities and hold new ones in fair conditions. Despite the nationwide dissatisfaction, Vucic and SNS said that the reports of irregularities were fabricated, rejecting the calls for an investigation.

Moreover, after documenting and reporting a series of election irregularities, a civil society organization called the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability, or CRTA, has fallen victim to Serban state officials. After the CRTA came out with evidence of numerous irregularities that the ruling SNS party committed, Serbian officials called for a ban on the organization and the arrest of CRTA’s members, labeling them as “foreign mercenaries.”

Many foreign officials condemned SNS’s violent behavior towards the CRTA. One Chairman in the US Senate and the representatives of the ruling coalition in Germany heavily criticized Vucic and his party and said that the EU should rethink how it deals with Serbian officials.

On Wednesday the 17th, Serbians in the north of Kosovo started collecting signatures to dismiss the mayors of four municipalities with a Serbian majority. The petition has gathered hundreds of signatures in the municipalities of North Mitrovica and Leposavic. The petitions for the Zvecan and Zubin Potok municipalities will be launched later this month. For the petition to succeed, it needs the signatures of at least twenty percent of all registered voters in a municipality

Recall that in April twenty twenty-three, Kosovo’s government appointed ethnic Albanians as mayors of four Serbian-majority municipalities, which Serbians living in Kosovo protested against. Kosovo’s government appointed the elections’s winners as mayors despite the record low turnout of only around four percent in the elections.

On that note about Kosovo, their Central Bank announced on Wednesday the 17th that the board approved a Regulation on Cash Operations that enforces the sole use of the Euro. While Kosovo has been using the Euro since two thousand two, northern parts of Kosovo with a Serbian majority continued to use Serbian Dinars along with Euros. The Regulation on Cash Operations aims to make the Euro the only valid currency in the entire territory of Kosovo, which includes the Serbian-majority northern municipalities. Peter Stano, the EU spokesperson, announced that the Union had asked Kosovo authorities to explain the removal of the Serbian dinar.

The Regulation on Cash Operations will come into force on the 1st of February.

On Saturday the 20th, Dragan Stanojevic, the leader of the Serbian branch of Another Ukraine, a Russian civic organization, rejected Ukraine’s earlier demands to halt the branch’s works in Serbia. Viktor Medvedchuk is the head of the Russian civic organization. He has been accused of treason and is Putin’s personal friend. The fact that there is a Serbian branch of the organization shows that Serbia hasn’t condemned Russia for its aggression against Ukraine. In December of twenty twenty-three, the Ukrainian Embassy in Belgrade asked the Serbian Foreign Affairs Ministry to suspend the branch’s activities, but Stanojevic rejected the request, calling it absurd. Stanojevic said that Ukraine’s bad relations with Medvedchuk do not concern Another Ukraine’s Serbian branch, and that the branch will continue operating.

Speaking of bilateral relations, on Tuesday the 16th, Serbia and China established an Association for Promotion of the Economy, Trade, Culture and Tourism. At the ceremony, Maja Gojkovic, the Serbian Minister of Culture, said that the association is in line with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is a global infrastructure development strategy. Gojkovic said that Serbia is committed to China’s global development initiatives. Recall that the two countries signed a free trade deal in October of twenty twenty-three. During Tuesday's event, Serbia and China also signed many other deals, such as a memorandum on cooperation in the field of economic development and three commercial contracts with Chinese companies on transport infrastructure.

In other news, on Saturday the 20th, citizens of Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia gathered in front of the City Assembly to protest against obstetric violence, after a recent arrest of a doctor whose negligence led to the death of a newborn. The protesters called for a systemic reaction of the authorities, and demanded that the state allow the presence of a family member or a friend during childbirth. Right now, most hospitals do not allow a woman in labor to be accompanied, which has allowed doctors to be less careful when a woman is giving birth, sometimes resulting in the death of a newborn. The protesters held signs that read “Presence is a right” and “Together against silence.”

Speaking of rights, the International Trade Union Confederation published a report called Global Rights Index for twenty twenty-three, which ranks around 150 countries by the degree of respect for workers’ rights. The report showed that in Serbia, employers have often dismissed, transferred, or demoted workers and trade union members in an attempt to stop them from joining trade unions. The report said that workers’ access to courts and judicial recourses was limited because of the high legal fees. On the scale from one to five, where one represents sporadic violations of rights and five stands for no guarantee of rights due to the breakdown of the rule of law, Serbia scored four, which stands for Systematic violations of rights.

In some environmental news, President Vucic announced that the country will propose holding further discussions with Rio Tinto, an Anglo-Australian mining group, on the Jadar mining project in the west of Serbia. Vucic said he would consider the citizens' concerns while trying to strike a deal with Río Tinto—trying to please both the mining group and society. However, Serbian environmental activists do not support Rio Tinto since its plans to exploit the lithium mine in the area of Loznica in western Serbia, which would inevitably lead to heavy water and land pollution. Vucic assured that Rio Tinto would have to offer the cleanest solutions in order to collaborate with the country. He added that lithium, which Rio Tinto intends to mine in Serbia, plays an essential role in the transition to the use of clean technologies such as electric vehicles.

On that note about vehicles, Time Weekly, a news outlet, published the results of a research it conducted in twenty twenty-three on the average age of cars imported into Serbia from the EU. The results showed that Serbia imported around 150,000 used cars from the EU, with their average age being around eighteen years. An assistant professor from the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade noted that Western countries are imposing clean and sustainable rules for themselves, while exporting their junk to poorer countries. In twenty twenty-three, the European Commission proposed that the EU countries stop exporting older, dilapidated cars. However, no EU country considered the proposal.

The European Commission said that the removal of vehicles older than fifteen years would significantly contribute to the reduction in CO2 emissions, as well as road safety.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

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