Election Campaign: Over 20 thousand euros fines for political candidates and parties

PZAP in six verdicts has pronounced fines because of violations of election campaign rules, among them both for stimulating and hate speech.

Over 20 thousand euros is the amount of fines the Electoral Panel for Ances and Parashtre (PZAP) has pronounced for several candidates and political subjects during the campaign for local elections 2025. P ZAP in six verdicts has pronounced fines because of violations of election campaign rules, among them both for stimulating and hate speech.

The campaign for the 12 October local elections is now on 13th and will last 30 days. There are 206 candidates competing for municipal leaders, meanwhile, there are more than 5600 candidates targeting seats in municipal municipalities.

Volnet Bugakku from the Kosovo Democratic Institute (KDI) speaks of the PZAP's current decisions and fines pronounced so far for candidates and political subjects.

Until now, as I observed by the PZAP platform, there are about six fine decisions that have been pronounced by several political candidates and subjects due to violations of election rules. Of the 17 cases I identified, six of them are fined. With seven thousand euros in fines for promotional language and hatreds mostly so far leading Sokol Halil's civic initiatives, the same is condemned in two cases by PZAP because of the use of stimulating and hateful language. Then the second is the Democratic Party of Kosovo, the same because of campaigning in public institutions or even encouraging language. This time around comes Faton Peci, the candidate for Mitrovica and is sentenced to 2,500 euros in fines because of campaigning in public space, and recently there is the LDK candidate for Pristina's chairman, fined fined Rama for campaigning in public institutions. These are the fines category so far, totaling 20 thousand and 500 euros in fine”, he declares.

In the same period of the national election campaign, Bugakku says over 100,000 euros of fines had been pronounced.

Contrary to parliamentary elections of February 9th, only in the first 10 days of those elections, P ZAP had pronounced some 100 thousand euros in fines. And the number of complaints about stimulating and hateful languages even greater than now as far as the actual phase is concerned. Somewhere in two or three cases, we have the sentence on using the language of promotional and hateful, while in parliamentary elections you know that in 10 or 12 days it has been a huge number of decisions that have condemned political subjects with extremely high fines in terms of the use of stimulating and hate speech”, he adds.

Promoting and hate speech on social networks, Venera Gashi from Democracy for Development (D4D) says they have observed during monitoring. She says during these days they have monitored candidates for mayor and those for municipal assemblies, which she says were targeted against their candidates.

“We have been monitoring from the first period of campaigning to the present we have encountered in hate language mainly, for example, the first week's monitoring period of 32 cases, 22 of them have been with hate tongues. Personal Bullism has been three, three deinformation, an ethnic religious attack, and three other occasions. But even this week and in general we have encountered more hate language cases”, she says of Kosova Preris.

This election campaign is more pale than the preliminary, says, among other things, Meddition Demolli, which is director in “Movement Fol”, where, among other things, it says, “candidate programmes leave a lot to wish for”.

The “even two days is half of the campaign going through, what has been noticed is an extremely pale campaign almost of all candidates. Maybe this is where politics at the central level that we still don't have the central system institutions and it's not the importance that's being paid enough for these local elections, having problems at the central level. Perhaps more is continuing to take note of events at the central level than at the local level, which I consider to be wrong because the municipality is the first door of the citizen to address their demands. But their programs leave much to be desired. The level of television and chronic debates that convey election campaigns also leaves much to desire”, it declares.

For 13 days of campaigning, Demolli adds that based on monitoring, there have also been debates with inappropriate language.

The “are all being monitored, there are debates with expressions we should not hear from candidates, in the few debates facing candidates for mayors of various municipalities. But it is not at the most dangerous and the greatest level possible to alert us to that extent. So far, I consider that the last week will be the most expressed language of violence”, it concludes.

In the 12 October local vote-right elections, there are two million and 69 thousand and 98 voters. Among them are more than 43 thousand voters from abroad. In these local elections, 93 subjects have been certified, out of them 32 political parties, 32 civic initiatives, two coalitions and 27 independent candidates.

The last local elections in Kosovo were organised in 2021.