The election campaign is unfolding amid shrinking freedoms and deepening inequality among electoral contestants and voters – this is the conclusion of the Preliminary report on election campaign, presented today at a press conference by CRTA Election Observation Mission.

The negative assessment of electoral conditions stems from phenomena such as obstruction of participation in the elections and in campaign activities, obstacles to exercising the right to vote, and restrictions on freedom of information, expression, association and independent election observation.

Instead of ensuring that the law is applied and that all contestants enjoy equal conditions, a range of institutions, from ministries to local governments, became involved in electoral engineering aimed at exerting illegitimate influence on the electoral infrastructure and the electoral offer.

For at least seven of the 18 confirmed candidate lists there are well-founded suspicions that they are fake or satellite lists. This was also reflected in the decisions of the majority in the expanded composition of the Republic Electoral Commission (REC), which was guided by protecting the political interests of one side rather than the lawfulness of the process and the rights of voters.

On average, 98 per cent of the statements of support for lists of doubtful authenticity were certified in municipal administrations rather than by notaries. Some of the signatures for the “Aleksandar Vučić – United Serbia” list are also disputed, following allegations that they were certified in municipalities without the voters being present.

By failing to specify how applications to vote outside the polling station are to be made, the REC also left room for potentially unlawful practices: the City Election Commission in Zaječar, for instance, allowed political parties to register voters for voting from home.

By the last week of the campaign, 116 incidents involving physical violence and verbal threats had been recorded. In many campaign activities on the ground, participants’ safety took priority over presenting the lists’ programmes. In some cases where opposition candidates and supporters were at risk, the police acted with delay. In securing the activities of the ruling party, it acted efficiently and preventively every time.

Opposition activists, above all those linked to the Student List, were subjected to surveillance, interception and being brought in for informative interviews. This requires the Ministry of the Interior to give the public clear information on the grounds for such actions and to dispel uncertainty about the readiness of the police to provide equal protection to all citizens.

Of more than 1,500 activities of public officials, more than 650 were recorded with elements of misuse of public office and public resources. Potential misuse and manipulation of the law are linked to a third of the activities of the “Aleksandar Vučić – United Serbia” list. Observers recorded more than 250 cases, most often in public enterprises, in which getting or keeping a job, or access to social assistance or a public service, was used as a means of extracting citizens’ support.

As election day approaches, inequality in the media is growing. On broadcasters with national coverage, almost three quarters of the time devoted to political actors went to representatives of the authorities.

Positive tone accounted for more than half of that airtime. The Student List, as the most represented opposition actor, was portrayed negatively in more than 80 per cent of the time in which it was discussed.

On Radio Television of Serbia (RTS), an impression of balance was created only in the so-called election blocks. In regular programming, representatives of the authorities accounted for as much as 94 per cent of extended prime time.

After he resigned as President of the Republic, Aleksandar Vučić’s share fell from just over half to a third of television time. This was primarily due to a change in the programming of Radio Television of Serbia, where after his resignation Vučić appeared only in election programming. On the other broadcasters Aleksandar Vučić still took up almost every other second. He nonetheless remained the most represented political actor, with more time devoted to him than to the entire opposition. After the resignation the number of Vučić’s live link-ups rose from 27 in the first part of the campaign to 78 in the final stage.

The elections will be conducted on the basis of a voter register whose accuracy, and protection from misuse, are disputed, despite the untrue claims of the Government of Serbia’s Office for IT and eGovernment that the Commission for the audit of the voter register had found the register to be almost entirely accurate. The competent institutions did not give the Commission access to all the necessary data, leaving the public without answers to questions about multiple entries, fictitious permanent residence and other inconsistencies in the voter register.

It was also observed that around 30,000 voters are not entered in the voter register extracts as expected – in alphabetical order – but that their names appear either at the end of the extract or elsewhere in it. CRTA Election Observation Mission therefore calls on the REC to instruct polling boards to make an additional effort to find voters who appear to be missing. We urge voters who find themselves in this situation to insist on an additional check of the extract so that they are not prevented from voting.