Buying and Selling of Votes

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On December 9, 2013, the Justice in Kosovo discussed the buying and selling of votes in Pasjan.

Three persons who claimed they were offered money to vote for the Serbian Civic Initiative (GIS) were interviewed by the program. The interviewees wanted to remain anonymous because of legal reasons.

“People from GIS offered us 20,000 Dinars and required us to give them our ID. They also asked us how many members of the family we had and our cell phone numbers,” said person A.

The approximate version also includes person B, a witness from the municipality of Partesh. He claimed that he was offered 5,000 Dinars in four installments. Whereas the other witness said he saw some citizens of Partesh and Ranillug taking money for selling their vote.
“Some relatives of mine that do not have a car asked me to drive them to receive the money. When we went there many people were taking the money for their votes,” said person C.

The three witnesses told Justice in Kosovo that the case was reported to the police, but they complain that the police did not take any measures.
The Kosovo Police admitted that they received the complaints of these three citizens, but they also claimed the witnesses did not give the police exact information where these legal violations happened and who the persons involved were.

“The prosecutor asked them to give more specific information such as who was involved in the violation and where. They could not provide us this information, therefore we could not take measures,” said Shaban Azizi.

The prosecutor, Agron Uka, was present on the day this case was reported. He told Justice in Kosovo that during the first interview, the witnesses did not give us enough information to initiate an investigation. Uka said that he visited the place together with the witnesses but they were not able to give him names or other basic information.

Besides the accusation of buying and selling votes, there were also other problems in Partesh.
The voting center in Pasjan was destroyed on December 1. The director of security in the Municipality of Partesh, Miodrag Guzvic (SLS) was arrested in the case.

The police said that the arrest of the director of security in the Municipality of Partesh was based on facts. However, Guzvic’s colleague Goran Jancic, said that this could be a mistake made by the prosecution.

However, Zoran Nikolic, brother of the candidate for Mayor, Dragan Nikolic, who is also part of this party said that the incident started after a phone call where the SLS militants found out about the results and they headed to the polling station.
However, after the polling center in Pasjan was destroyed, CEC was obliged to repeat the elections for three polling stations; these elections will be held on December 15th, 2013.

Moreover, one cameraman who was reporting for Puls TV was threatened and attacked by the people who destroyed the polling center. The director of Puls TV, Nenad Milenkovic, said that his cameraman was threatened and attacked. The person who attacked the cameraman asked him to destroy the material that he had recorded.

Besides the injuries of the cameraman, Marko Stankovic, Puls Tv also suffered a damage of 8,000 euros from the attackers.
Kosovo Police said that they have immediately pressed charges against five persons who are suspected to have been involved in this incident.