New protest by Kosovo Serbs because of election law

GRACANICA - Employees from all ten municipalities in Kosovo that have a Serb majority population stopped their work for 15 minutes on Thursday because of the announced adoption of amendments to the general election law by the Kosovo parliament, Radio Gracanica has reported.

Employees from the municipality of Gracanica thereby sent the public third warning since the start of the year that the adoption of such a law would threaten the rights of the minority communities in Kosovo, and they demanded that the bill be withdrawn.

The draft law already passed the first vote on Sunday and it is on the parliament agenda for the final vote next week, when it is expected to be adopted.

Nenad Rikalo, the only Serb member of the Kosovo central election commission, cautioned earlier that if the Kosovo parliament passed the bill, Serbs' rights would be reduced in a number of aspects.

Amendments to the election law envisage that only those holding Kosovo's citizenship would have the right to vote, which means that only those who have documents issued by the Kosovo Interior Ministry would be able to register in the electoral roll. That would diminish the number of Serbs eligible to vote to around 40,000, which is several time less than the real number, he said.

Furthermore, according to the new election law, every political party of Serbs or any other community would have to pass the electoral threshold of five percent in order to secure seats in the parliament.

With a limited number of voters, Serbs in the parliament could never again have more than 10 seats, Rikalo said, stressing that according to the valid election law, Serbs could have between 18 and 22 MPs.

Photo Tanjug, BOKI (Archive...

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