The election process in Serbia was marked by unequal conditions for participants in elections, resulting from government representatives that were favoured by the majority of media outlets, pressure on employees in public companies, and abuse of administrative resources, observers from international organisations stated in Belgrade on Monday.
At a news conference where the preliminary conclusions after the presidential and snap parliamentary elections in Serbia were presented, the special coordinator and head of the OSCE’s short-term observers, Kyriakos Hadjiyianni, pointed to bias in favour of the incumbents.
“The media covered all election participants, but most public and private media companies favoured the Serbian president (Aleksandar Vucic) and the ruling coalition and thereby limited the opportunity for voters to be fully informed about the elections,” said Hadjiyianni.
The head of a European Parliament delegation, Thijs Reuten, said that “the dominant role of the ruling majority in the election process is cause for serious concern,” adding that “the abuse of administrative resources gave the ruling coalition a significant advantage.”
The head of a delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Aleksander Pociej, said that it was “regrettable” that most media outlets had been biased towards the ruling parties’ candidates. “Regardless of what we can say about election day, neutral reporting on what is going on in the country is probably the most important for democracy and rule of law,” said Pociej.
Also on Monday, the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe recommended to the authorities in Serbia to separate local elections from elections at other levels and to set aside a separate day for them, instead of holding them simultaneously with the presidential and parliamentary ones, as was the case with the vote on Sunday.
On the other hand, the vice-president of the upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, Konstantin Kosachev stated that the elections in Serbia and Hungary have confirmed the sovereignty of these countries.
“Truly sovereign states in Europe can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Besides Russia, they are Belarus, Armenia, Turkey and, as was brilliantly confirmed in yesterday’s elections, Serbia and Hungary,” Kosachev wrote on his Telegram channel. He added that the same thing could not be said for Germany, France and Italy.
