Row over Electoral Rolls of Ethnic Minorities
“Statement of Mr. Svetozar Ciplic, Minister of Human and Minority Rights, that the process of registration of ethnic minority voters in separate electoral rolls “went smoothly” could not be further from the truth”, said Mr. Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information of Public Importance, for “Blic” daily. He added that “all sorts of irregularities have been observed in the process – omissions, criminal offences, violations of human rights – and these were not just isolated incidents”.
Mr. Sabic reacted yesterday to statements made in an interview Minister Ciplic gave to our paper. Commenting on the process of registration of ethnic minority voters in electoral rolls, the Commissioner said: “I emphasize that I am talking about the most severe of violations, those which constitute serious criminal offences”.
“We can only guess how many other, more benign violations and offences may have been committed and how many personal data files, private or owned by political parties without any legal basis, may have been created”, Mr. Sabic added.
He said that “apparently anything was possible because of the instructions on the manner of registration the Ministry had given”.
“In some cases, individuals brought several hundreds, or even several thousands of applications for registration and local self-government authorities, adhering to the instructions, could not even ask them to present powers of attorney or identify their identities. And, of course, many things happened which could hardly be described as part of a “smooth” process. In one city alone, almost 1,400 double applications for registration have been counted, meaning that as many persons have been registered in two electoral rolls. It will be possible to identify at least some of the potential perpetrators because some local self-government authorities nevertheless made an effort to identify persons who handed in certain groups of applications. But the vast majority of them will remain unknown forever”, Mr. Sabic emphasized. He added that “it is unbelievable that the Minister said only 96 cases were disputed” and that the Commissioner filed only 13 criminal charges.
“And those “only” 13 criminal charges pertain to perpetration of several hundreds of criminal offences of unauthorized data processing in concurrence with forgery. It is difficult even to guess what would be the number of criminal charges and criminal offences if we analyzed all 170 local self-governments. Although we have fewer inspectors than Minister Ciplic has state secretaries and assistants, we have managed to achieve this much. The Ministry should require of all local self-governments to provide information about the number of “voluntarily” registered persons who, after they found out about the registration, asked to be deleted from a separate electoral roll and it should publish that information”, Mr. Sabic emphasized.
Interfile: Mr. Ciplic does not want to argue
Minister Svetozar Ciplic said to “Blic” daily that the aim of the Ministry was to form councils of ethnic minorities in accordance with the law.
“While it is not my aim to dismiss omissions and irregularities as insignificant, I equally have no intention of discussing “what if” scenarios”, Mr. Ciplic commented on Commissioner Sabic’s reaction.
“In this procedure, everyone should perform their work in accordance with their powers and duties and the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights is eliminating irregularities identified during elections for councils of ethnic minorities in accordance with its powers”, Mr. Ciplic emphasized.