Glogovica: prosecutors probe vote buying for Zukorlic's SPP

The Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Aleksinac has opened a case over claims that voters at a polling station in the village of Glogovica received money or gifts for voting for the list “Usama Zukorlic (SPP) - Movement for Unification”. The trigger was posts on social media, and the suspicion concerns the repeat vote on November 1, when the Party of Justice and Reconciliation (SPP) won 53 votes in the village, after getting none there in the October 25 election.

According to Klix.ba, the case was opened on November 2. We wrote yesterday about the seat the list won and the doubts surrounding it, and since then the prosecutors’ statement and figures from the polling station itself have come in.

Where does the case stand now?

The sources describe it differently. According to Danas, the Aleksinac prosecutors ordered the competent police station to pass all information about possible irregularities in Glogovica to the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Nis, to its Special Department for the Suppression of Corruption. Klix.ba, citing Insajder, reports that the case itself has been transferred to that department.

The offense under examination is giving and accepting bribes in connection with voting, Article 156, paragraph 1 of the Criminal Code. Klix.ba says the penalty is up to three years in prison, and up to five years if the offense is committed by a member of a polling board.

What do the figures from polling station 74 show?

Data from the Republic Electoral Commission for that station differ from one vote to the next:

• October 25: the list “Aleksandar Vucic - Serbia United” received 215 votes, the Student List 111, and Usama Zukorlic’s list none.
• November 1: Serbia United received 109 votes, the Student List 61, the SPP 53, and the Socialist Party of Serbia one.

There were 622 registered voters at that station, and 224 voted on Sunday.

What happened at the other polling stations in Aleksinac?

Voting was repeated at eight polling stations in Aleksinac, with 3,104 registered voters. The SPP won 67 votes across them. Besides Glogovica, it had votes in Prcilovica (4), Deligrad (5), Trnjani (3) and Loznac (2).

The figures for October 25 differ between sources, so they need to be kept apart. At the Glogovica polling station the list had no votes. Crta says the list received no votes and no support signatures in Aleksinac, while Klix.ba writes that it had four votes in the whole municipality then.

Klix.ba also records jumps at other stations: in Loznica 26 votes on November 1 and none a week earlier, at polling station 33 in Pirot from 0 to 17, and at polling station 81 in Novi Pazar 176 votes, which is 147 more than on October 25.

What do Crta and the SPP say?

Crta’s observers in Aleksinac heard claims of vote buying from members of polling boards and from voters. Pavle Dimitrijevic, a lawyer with Crta, told Nova that their long-term observers had not recorded any campaign by the list in that city:

“Also, our long-term observers did not record that this list had any campaign activities in Aleksinac.”

In a statement, Crta said that “only 12 votes decided that Zukorlic’s list wins a seat”, which is why “the recorded claims of vote buying in favor of that list are of additional concern”. Dimitrijevic adds that vote buying is a criminal offense, but it does not lead to a repeat vote at the disputed stations or to the loss of a seat:

“Zukorlic’s list will have a member of parliament in any case, even if a court establishes that votes were bought in its favor. Since ‘political justice’ will not be served, it is all the more important that prosecutors take the investigation of this case seriously and establish any criminal responsibility.”

The SPP told BBC News in Serbian that it learned of the claims from the media. Edin Numanovic, the party’s vice president, told Blic, as reported by Nova:

“Our president and our party are known as opponents of this kind of politics. If anyone from the SPP took part in it, they will be strictly sanctioned.”

Numanovic claims the SPP won its votes in Aleksinac through “a combination of several factors”: all party committees across Serbia, led by the one in Nis, campaigned in Aleksinac, and businesspeople from Novi Pazar secured a significant number of votes through their business associates. Party leader Usama Zukorlic told a news conference that the list won more than 300 votes at the repeated stations, Sandzak press reports.

How much is one seat worth?

Voting on November 1 was repeated at 53 polling stations in 24 cities and municipalities, with 24,438 voters, and turnout was around 44.9 percent according to Crta. After it, the SPP holds one seat under the natural threshold for minority lists, while the Student List fell from 141 to 140 seats. Crta estimates that the list “Aleksandar Vucic - Serbia United” is entitled to 103 seats.

Bojana Selakovic, coordinator of the National Convention on the European Union, wrote on X that this is not only about one seat fewer for the Student List, but about the entry of a party that was part of the ruling majority for years:

“There is no interest of the Student List in its representatives failing to respond to these machinations with the legal instruments available to them, and in immediately disappointing members of the Bosniak people, where they placed the greatest share of their trust in it.”

Selakovic notes that elections for the national councils of national minorities follow on November 8, so the seat may affect how voters see the Bosniak National Council. After results from all 8,392 polling stations are published, a 96-hour deadline runs for final results, then 30 days to constitute the Serbian parliament and 90 days to form a new government.