EVERYTHING IN ORDER, BUT THERE WERE NO VOTERS

B&H Elections in Serbia:

AIM Banja Luka, September 7, 1996

Out of approximately 85 thousand refugees who chose to vote in Serbia (in places of their current residence), according to the data of the Commissariat for Refugees of Serbia, 50 thousand of them came to the polls.

OSCE observers who controlled the elections have doubts about this figure because 54 polling stations were eerily empty. Obviously everything had been prepared for the elections, except the voters. Most of them have evidently decided to be on the safe side and send their votes by mail.

In Kikinda, Zrenjanin, Subotica, in four days, absolutely nobody came to vote. In each of Krusevac, Nis, Kursumlija, seven refugees exercised their right to vote, and in Belgrade, in depending on location, there were one to ten voters at the polls. Krusevac ranks first in Serbia according to the number of voters with its hundred of them, and Jagodina and Kragujevac with 60 each follow. The others are somewhere in between.

"Lack of confidence is enormous, and refugees are confused and uninformed. It seems that the elections were completed at the very registration of refugees and their choice to exercise their right to vote in Serbia or to vote on site in Republika Srpska. It so happened that out of 220,640 refugees, 84, 781 chose to vote in Serbia, and 155,058 to do it in Republika Srpska. Many did not wish to go to Bosnia to vote, but were simply pushed into it, because they had not known that they had had the right to choose. And now, they, of course, don't want to vote", says Sonja Biserko, President of the Helsinki Committee for human rights in Serbia, whose representatives were the only ones from this spaec who had won OSCE's confidence to be the observers at the elections.

Local organizers saw to it that the refugees could vote only for lists of candidates from the Republika Srpska. Those who voted in Belgrade, for example, could give their votes only to candidates from Brcko or Bijeljina. Those in Kursumlija, Vlasotince, and Kragujevac voted for Bosanski Brod, and Kikinda and Zrenjanin for Derventa. This is interpreted by the Helsinki Committee by the effort to ethnically consolidate the territory of Republika Srpska and colonize it with Serbs who used to live in cities and villages of what is now the Federation. Our interlocutor mentions the example of Drvar; citizens of Drvar wished to vote in Drvar, either from here or from Bosnia. Only 400 of them won that right. And then forged ballots appeared. People came here with them and it turned out that they had been told that they could have voted for Drvar in the Federation, and in fact they had given their votes for a village in Drvar municipality which is on the territory of RS".

"It also turned out that refugees who wished to vote for places in the Federation where they used live, and most of the refugees in Serbia did, could not do it for the simple reason that Republika Srpska had not nominated its candidates in places of the Federation. And while three hundred buses with voters will start on their way to Republika Srpska on September 14, nothing has been organized for the elections in places of the Federation. Those who might want to go there and vote will have to see to it on their own. The authorities on both sides of the Drina, at least when speaking of the Serb entity, have done their best to cement division of Bosnia with these false elections. With no reservations, Buba Morina, the main person for organizing the elections, publicly and openly addressed the refugees via the official television of Serbia with the message that they should vote in these elections for the state of Republika Srpska..."

For the time being, the refugees have responded by abstaining from the elections. So far it is completely uncertain whether the announced three huundred buses will leave full for Bosnia when the time comes.

If complaints of the refugees are disregarded which arrived at the Helsinki Committee and which are mostly sent to international commissions in charge of the elections, and which mostly refer to forgeries, even on signed Forms P1 and P2, voters signed that they wished to vote in Serbia but then found their signatures on forms for voting in RS, the process of voting at polling stations was correct and passed without major complaints. They warn in Helsinki Committee, however, that many people have not received ballots, although they possessed the so-called third form as evidence that they had been registered as voters.

"This can be a huge source for manipulation with votes, in view of the fact that even after completed voting, list of those who had voted has not been made yet, least of all completed", warns Sonja Biserko.

(AIM) Branka Kaljevic