Milosevic gets additional 142,000 votes from Kosovo

BELGRADE, Friday - The Democratic Opposition of Serbia has lodged a complaint with the Federal Election Commission demanding the annulment of 142,000 votes. The complaint is based on examination of hundreds of voting registers from polling stations in Kosovo. DOS legal representative Nebojsa Bakarec told media a short time ago that 142,000 citizens had cast votes at these stations. If the complaint were upheld, he said, Vojislav Kostunica would automatically have 50 53 per cent of the remaining votes which would mean first round victory. If the complaint were not upheld, said Bakarec, the opposition would file a complaint with the Constitutional Court.

The opposition claims that the Federal Election Commission counted an additional 142,000 votes for Slobodan Milosevic from phantom ballot papers collected from phantom polling stations in Kosovo.

Bakarec said that he was personally convinced of a series of irregularities in the disputed registers. As an example he said that according to the registers, about 28,000 people had cast votes, all of them for Milosevic, at eleven polling stations in Gnjilane, although there were only a few hundred Serbs living in the town. Some of the date, he said, came from polling stations which had not opened at all, a fact which could be confirmed by eyewitnesses. As one example he gave the Pec No. 1 station in the Pec Patriarchate where the Commission claimed that Milosevic had won 4,553 of 4,653 votes cast.

In many Kosovo towns, said Bakarec, Milosevic had won every vote. This had occurred in three polling stations in Podujevo, where 2,500 voters were registered, all cast votes and all voted for Milosevic.

Many of the Kosovo registers were signed by the same person in the name of all election committee members, Bakarec said. This had been confirmed by analysis of the handwriting and the pen used.

According to data collected by the United Nations mission in Kosovo, about 44,000 people voted in polling stations in the province.

Source: B92

---

Back to 'Hope' News | Hope on the Balkans