In the last three days of the election campaign, September 28-30, Democracy in Action observers monitored 290 activities of political entities across the country involving approximately 80,000 citizens. Public meetings are the most common form of such activities, dominating 87% of election campaign activities of political entities. The number of events that were not notified to the MEC within the timeframe remains rather high (15%). Failure of political entities to timely announce election events precludes fair and timely information of the public on the programs of the political entities in the race.

The language used by candidates in campaign activities was generally in line with the spirit of a free and competitive campaign. However, there have been cases where candidates of political parties sent offensive messages to their opponents of other parties (22 cases). Ethnic-based hate speech was identified in only one event organized by the PDK in Fushe Kosova.

The overall turnout of girls and women in election campaign activities in the last three days was around 24%. The presence of girls and women as speakers at events of political entities was approximately at the same level (23.6%). This disproportion indicates the unequal access of women and girls to the campaign when compared with candidates of the opposite sex and this is generally making the election race more unfavorable for women.

Increased participation of children in electoral activities was also noted. About 1,700 children were involved in the 99 observed activities while their participation was organized in 9 cases. According to a DiA observer, two high schools in Drenas finished their lessons two hours early on Monday due to a PDK meeting planned to take place at 17:00.

The use of public resources, such as official vehicles, was recorded in 9 election activities, while the number of official vehicles available to the political entities in the last three days was 17. The AAK-PSD coalition alone used a total of 13 vehicles in 5 events. The use of state, financial and human resources by the ruling political entities creates a distinct advantage for them and disrupts the principle of equal competition between the entities, but also between the candidates within the same entity. In general, the use of public resources for campaign purposes renders the integrity and fair competition in the campaign vulnerable.

In terms of violations of the campaign rules, during the 6 days of the campaign DiA submitted a total of 15 complaints to ECAP, 10 of which were approved (value of fines: 49,550 EUR), 1 was rejected and 4 are pending review.

Regarding the coverage of election campaign activities of political entities by the media, i.e. television chronicles, the data for the period September 27-30 show that LDK had the highest coverage with 106 minutes, followed by VV with 91 minutes, AAK-PSD with 82 minutes, PDK with 80 minutes, AKR-PD Initiative with 79 minutes, Lista Srpska with 23 minutes, Fjala with 6 minutes, SLS with 6 minutes, PEK with 5 minutes and other minority parties with only 7 minutes.

Based on the monitoring of Facebook livestream broadcasts of portals, LDK leads with 749 minutes in four portals, AAK-PSD coalition with 511 minutes in five portals, PDK with 355 minutes in six portals (RTK broadcast only PDK rallies again) and Nisma-AKR-PD with 248 minutes of ‘livestream’ in only 4 portals, while VV and other parties did not have any livestream.

Spending of political entities on activities monitored by DiA in the last three days amounts to over 500,000 EUR. This includes expenses related to the organization of election activities, calculated according to average market prices. This does not include possible discounts that economic operators offer to political entities or candidates for members of parliament.

The breakdown of expenditures by political entities for day 4, 5 and 6 of the election campaign is shown in the table below: