Two cases of endangering safety of CRTA observers recorded

Within the last two hours, the safety of CRTA observers was endangered in two recorded cases. One occurred outside of the polling station at Novi Beograd and the other at the polling station in Zvezdara municipality.

Incident in front of the polling station at Novi Beograd occurred when unidentified male person phisically assaulted a member of the CRTA’s mobile team who observed developments outside of the polling station. An assault happened when CRTA observers attempted to document cases of evidenting voters in separate lists in front of the polling station and potential vote buying. Unidentified male and female persons, handling separate lists of voters, at first verbally assaulted two members of the CRTA’s mobile team, which was followed by a punch in the head of the observer by a man who also threw water at observers. CRTA observers did not suffer any major injuries and the case is beign reported to the police.

Another incident occurred at the polling station in Zvezdara municipality, when CRTA observer discovered parallel list of voters at the polling station, which represents the violation of election procedures. When the observer attempted to gather additional information from the polling board, polling board members became obviously upset and started to yell, after which the fuss at the polling station occurred. This caused CRTA observer to leave the polling station, as he feared for his safety.

CRTA election observation mission calls upon all actors participating in elections to remain calm and to comply with electoral laws and procedures, in order to ensure peaceful and democratic elections conduct.

CRTA’s monitoring of the Belgrade elections is based on statistical principles that allow the effective and systemic observation of the election process on the day of the vote. CRTA uses the parallel vote tabulation methodology (PVT) that enables the assessment of the overall voting process on the Election Day – opening of polling stations, voting process and vote count – in an unbiased and systematic manner. PVT methodology uses a random and representative sample of polling stations, meaning that the results are representative for the entire territory.

 CRTA is a member of the global and European networks of election monitoring organizations – GNDEM and ENEMO.

CRTA election observation mission will issue the next public statement at 6 pm. You may follow the conference live at the website CRTA.rs or at the Facebook page CRTA.rs.