Referendum Results Suspicious

31 October 2006

The Referendum on the New Constitution of Serbia succeeded, reports CeSID on the basis of its exit poll conducted on a representative sample of 600 ballot stations. 51.6% of all registered voters voted for the New Constitution. In absolute numbers, that is 108,000 votes more than the required threshold.

CeSID's presentation of turnout results

Although the political parties that initiated the referendum and the Government congratulated the citizens on their new Constitution, serious doubts and suspicions about the veracity and validity of the results started circulating in the public.

The major cause of suspicion is the fact that the turnout was extremely low during the two days of the Referendum (rather unusual practice), which has risen dramatically over the past several hours to reach the level of 4% turnout per hour, ultimately reaching the final turnout of 53.5%.

CeSID reports major irregularities in eight of the 600 ballot stations monitored by its observers, such as voting without presentation of proper personal identification documents, or proxi voting (one member would vote for the whole family. CeSID also recorded a number of minor violations of proper voting procedures.

The Liberal Democratic Party, the leader of the Boycott Bloc, claims that the Government stole the referendum and that only 49.7 percent of the registered voters turned out at the polling stations. LDP presented video recordings from two polling stations in Vracar and Stari Grad municipalities in Belgrade, depicting citizens allowed to vote without ID and on behalf of other people. The recordings are available on the YouTube online video service.

Additional Objections by the International Community
In spite of the disputed regularity, the European Commission and the Council of Europe presented positive assessments of the Referendum. Although they avoided, over the past several days, to comment on the defects of the Constitution, they announced, only after the vote, that they will issue their own comments on the text of the Constitution.

B92 reports, invoking sources in the European Union, that the EU report to be released on November 8 will reprimand the authors of the Constitution on the solutions regarding the judiciary, having in mind that Brussels believes that the new Constitution opens the door for too big political influence on the work and election of judges.

Another objection will refer to the provisions on international relations, which state that the norms of international law and international treaties will be applied only if they are in compliance with the Constitution, which gives the Constitution supremacy over the international documents.

EU also believes that the Constitution doesn�t provide for full decentralization of the country, which renders the regions in Serbia ineligible for various EU programmes that are available only on regional level.

NGOs Congratulated Vojvodina Citizens on Successful Boycott
According to CeSID, the highest turnout was registered in Kosovo (89,7%), while the lowest turnout was in Vojvodina (43,6%). NGO Initiative for Boycott congratulated the citizens of Vojvodina on the successful boycott.

The turnout, far below the necessary 50% plus one voter, proved once again that the citizens of Vojvodina don�t agree to the humiliating definition of Vojvodina�s autonomy provided by this Constitution. The citizens proved that they are more mature than the political elites and they deserve better elites and better future, not the darkness offered by the politicians in power, according to the organizations involved in the initiative.

"The citizens of Vojvodina showed that they are the true European face of Serbia. Every future government will have to bear that in mind�, says the public statement by the Initiative.