DnV: There are incidents, hate language is escalating

Incident, language and hate, small number of participants in electoral gatherings, public resource use, child involvement in the campaign, as well as small participation of women in gatherings, are some of the irregularities Democracy in Action has recorded during the first nine days of the pre-election campaign.

Life Krasniqi from DnV at a media conference has presented the DnV monitoring report, where he said that during these nine days they have monitored 292 activities of political subjects throughout the country and that some irregularities have been observed.

“What is noted at nearly 10 days of the first half of the campaign is that activities are generally gatherings, with smaller numbers of participants of between 50 and 100 participants. There are only about 10 gatherings that have had over a thousand participants. As in previous campaigns and in this campaign, we see that public resource use continues, we have used public resources as civilian servants or public cars in 15 of the 292 activities monitored by the DNV. We can truthfully say that these have been observed on 12 occasions in activities organised by the PDK, on three occasions in activities organised by the LDK, and on 2 occasions in activities organised by the Initiative and one in an event organised by the VV, and another by the Serbian List. Both in the past and this time it is seen that the involvement of children in the campaign continues to remain the problem”, she said.

In contrast, Albert Krasniqi stressed that during these campaign days, the first incidents have begun and that hate speech is escalating. While he said police participation in these gatherings, which are organised by political subjects, is necessary.

The first incidents have also begun to mark the activities of political subjects and to escalate the use of hate speech, therefore police participation at these political gatherings that are organised by political subjects is necessary. From what we have seen in 121 activities or 41 percent of the gatherings has not been offered security on the part of the Kosovo Police, for which we call as long as the Kosovo Police have capacity to provide security in all that is necessary. The hate speech has begun to be used at political party gatherings. It has been observed in six activities organised by the PDK, and by a VV and Initiative, as well as by the SDA subject from the Bosniak community. The first incidents have been marked since September 27th, where LDK offices in the village of Raushiq have been hit with stones and the glass of this office has been damaged. Also, at 28 p.m. the next day, in the village of Glareva, the AAK Assembly candidate, the branch in Kline, Nazif Gashi has been burned by the type of persons already unknown, and last night the VV offices“have been damaged, he said.

Krasniqi also condemned the violence used by Frasher Krasniqi and Milaim Zeka in a televised debate.

We want the violence that has been used yesterday in debates by two citizen representatives, respectively. The physical clash and denigrative language used by citizens' representatives is unacceptable. We condemn him harshly, and there are no excuses for such cases. So even the political subjects of these MPs should clearly distance themselves from such cases. We also call on citizens not to be provoked by arches that promote hate or violence “, he said.

Otherwise, DnV for irregularities it has faced, handed over 25 complaints to the Electoral Panel for Anxiety and Parashtre, and that in total political subjects, only DnV complaints have been fined with 11,000 and 700 euros, the LDK leads with 8 complaints, PDK with 6 and VV with two complaints./S. Bird/