Election Commission Rejects Ljajic, Vucic List Complaints

Serbia’s Republican Election Commission (RIK) rejected three voter complaints against the decision proclaiming the “Rasim Ljajic, Ljudski (SDP, CDP)” list, and one complaint against the decision proclaiming the “Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia” list, at a session held on the evening of Friday, September 18. All four complaints were dismissed as unfounded. The lists are running in Serbia’s early parliamentary election, called for October 25.

Rasim Ljajic’s list was proclaimed on Tuesday, September 15. The first complaint against that decision arrived the very next day: Srdjan Sajn, president of the Roma Party, filed a complaint on behalf of his party on the evening of Wednesday, September 16, arguing that the list’s leader and part of its candidates are still publicly recognized as active members of a majority political party.

“The essence of our complaint is the request to annul the decision proclaiming the list headed by Rasim Ljajic as a minority list,” Sajn said at the time.

We reported on that complaint on September 17. Friday’s session, on September 18, dealt with new, separate complaints, filed by different people and built on different arguments.

The commission dismissed a complaint from voter Goran Lakatus as unfounded. Lakatus argued that the decision proclaiming Ljajic’s list rested on an incorrect application of substantive law and involved serious breaches of the election procedure, saying that Ljajic, as the longtime founder and president of the Social Democratic Party of Serbia, leads what is effectively a majority party rather than a minority list.

Voter Jelena Drenca, from Belgrade, challenged only two candidates from the same list, Edis Durgutovic and Muamer Bacevac. That complaint was rejected as well.

A third complaint against Ljajic’s list came from voter Mirsen Alibasic, who argued that RIK had failed to take into account all the facts required by law, pointing to Ljajic’s seventeen years in public and political life. The commission dismissed that complaint too, as unfounded.

The only complaint against Aleksandar Vucic’s list came from voter Jugoslav Nikolic, targeting the commission’s decision of September 13. Nikolic argued that using the sitting president’s name in the title of an election list violates the constitutional principle of separation of powers and amounts to abuse of public office to run one party’s campaign. RIK rejected this complaint as unfounded as well.

At the same session, the commission also issued decisions dismissing and appointing members of several local election commissions, and appointed a member and deputy member to RIK’s expanded composition, drawn from the ranks of lists already proclaimed. Two more election lists for October 25 were proclaimed at the session as well: “Autenticna desnica, dr Milos Jovanovic, Novi DSS, Monarhisti, Srpska koalicija Nada, Nacionalno demokratska alternativa, Nova demokratska stranka Srbije, Pokret za Kraljevinu Srbiju, Odvazno srpski” and “Izbor naroda: Miroslav Miki Aleksic, Milos Parandilovic, Aleksandar Jovanovic Cuta, Narodni pokret Srbije, Novo lice Srbije, Pokret ekoloski ustanak.”

The deadline for further complaints against already proclaimed lists runs in parallel with the formation of polling boards, so new challenges before RIK are not ruled out before the election administration officially closes ahead of October 25.