The coalition of NGOs “Democracy in Action” held today the third press conference on the election campaign, where it presented the findings of the monitoring of election campaign expenditures conducted in cooperation with Transparency International of the Czech Republic, the general problems in this area as well as the progress during the 19 days of the election campaign.

Ondrej Cakl from Transparency International of the Czech Republic explained that the survey conducted in cooperation with KDI on expenditures of Kosovo political entities for the local election campaign was implemented by delivering to political entities a questionnaire of eight questions on election campaign expenditures.

“Six out of 20 selected entities responded positively to the invitation to provide data on their expenditures. We consider it a progress the fact that some political entities have made the first step towards transparency. It should be noted that these six entities responded only after they were contacted by phone and they answered all the questionnaire items. The responding political entities provided information in the questionnaire about how much their budget is, how they will spend it and on their electoral staffs,” he said.

The following political entities completed the survey: Movement for Unity (LB), NISMA (Initiative for Kosovo), Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), Party Fjala, Social Democratic Party of Kosovo and Porket za Gora.

Florent Spahija from DiA spoke about the election campaign monitoring report. “DiA has so far monitored 803 activities of political entities nationwide, most of which were public gatherings. The meetings organized so far by political entities have been mostly small-scale meetings with up to 100 people and medium-scale meetings with up to 500 people. Only 21 gatherings were large scale,” he stated.

He further said that in 43 cases the presence of civil servants was observed in electoral rallies. The leading party in this regard with 26 cases is PDK. PDK has also used hate speech in 7 cases.

Spahija reported that in this election campaign women continue to have a very low participation in the monitored activities, with only 10% of the public being women. The number of women speakers is too small; 526 women have spoken so far, compared to 2165 men or, expressed in percentage, 20% women compared to 80% men.

Spahija further informed that “Alternativa” has the greatest number of women speakers, 11 out of 29 or 38%, followed by AKR with 65 out of 221 or 29%, LVV with 149 out of 648 or 23% and other parties. “Children have continued to be part of campaign activities; up to 1982 children were present in 236 activities of political entities. LDK leads in terms of children included in campaign activities, followed by LVV and PDK,” he added.

He further said that people with disabilities have been included in 87 meetings, whereas the number of such persons amounts to 275. Whereas, access to them was not provided in 253 out of the 803 monitored activities. So far, LDK and AAK have had two disabled persons speak before the mass in the rally, followed by PDK, LVV, AKR and Nisma with 1 speaker.

“The media has had free access and were present in 52% of the activities we monitored. The police was there to maintain order in most rallies, while in these elections there is an increasing number of events being held without the presence of any security,” he added.

Democracy in Action (DiA) is monitoring the election campaign nationwide with 61 long-term observers