Prishtina, 04 October 2019

Observers of the Democracy in Action (DnV) have in the period between 1-3 October observed 229 activities of political entities, attended by some 79 thousand citizens. The rate of electoral activities held by political entities that have not been announced to the Municipal Election Commissions (MECs) remains relatively high (18%). DnV believes that timely announcement of election activities by political entities allows for a better information to citizens about the election programs of political entities, proper flow of such activities, and increases the transparency of the electoral process by rendering more accessible the observation of expenditures political entities make in their campaigns.

Throughout the election campaign in Kosovo, political entities have disclosed their electoral pledges, mainly ideological, and related to current topics that arouse interest and emotion in potential voters.  In the last three days, the focus of electoral messages has been cast on three sectors: education, economy and health. The topics that have attracted the least attention, despite their importance, have included energy and administration.

DnV is closely following the case of former MP Ramiz Kelmendi and the actions of the State Prosecutor’s Office in investigating his case of violation of the free determination of voters, namely employees of the company owned by the MP himself. This alleged action is a violation of the autonomous opinion of the voter in exchange for material gain, but is furthermore a punishable criminal offense. DnV calls on the Prosecution to swiftly produce concrete results, in a way of preventing other similar cases.

The participation of women candidates as speakers in election campaign activities remains below the gender quota threshold, 30%.  in the last three days of the campaign, ononly 22% of speakers were women, despite legal and constitutional norms that guarantee gender equality in public and institutional life. A similar trend is in the order of the overall participation of women in electoral activities, where they represent only 25% of the participants.

Now approaching the conclusion of the campaign, there has been no reported intensification of efforts by political parties to educate their voters on proper casting of ballots. Promotion of the entity number in the list, and distributing business cards of candidates competing in elections have been the most frequent forms of voter “education”. The number of invalid ballots in the last municipal elections of 2017 was about 80 thousand.

As regards the violations of electoral rules, DnV has been rather active, and in the 9 days of monitoring of the election campaign, it has filed with ECAP a total of 23 complaints, of which 13 were upheld, 2 were rejected and 8 others are under review. The fines imposed on political entities in connection with the 13 complaints upheld amount to € 60.650.

With a view of measuring transparency of expenditures and funding operations of political entities in their campaign, together with Transparency International from the Czech Republic, at the onset of the campaign, KDI had distributed a questionnaire to all political entities competing in elections. The TI representative from the Czech Republic, Mr. Ondracka stated that “only 5 out of the 26 political entities contacted have responded positively to the expenditure questionnaire, and these are Movement for Self-Determination (Lëvizja Vetëvendosje), Justice Party (Partia e Drejtësisë), Fjala Party (Partia Fjala), KDTP (Kosova Demokratisi Turk Partisi) and GIG (Gragjanska Iniciativa Gora). He added that “Vetevendosje Movement, as a major political entity, has stated that it will spend over half a million Euros (565 thousand Euros) for the election campaign, while other smaller entities have declared much smaller amounts, and mainly for organizing rallies and posting billboards”.

DnV observers have continued to monitor the expenditures made by political entities on their campaign activities. In the days 7, 8 and 9 of the campaign, according to DnV observers’ reports, political entities have spent about 535,181 euros in electoral activities. This brings the total value of expenditures made in electoral activities, by day 9 to 2 million and 125 thousand euros.

*To calculate costs, we have used average market prices. This calculation does not include possible price discounts offered by economic operators to political entities or their candidates.

The expenditure breakdown by political entities, for the days 7, 8, and 9 of the election campaign can be seen in the table below:

Meanwhile, the overview of expenditures of each political entity for the campaign, from day one and until today, is as follows: