Serbs protest in Gracanica

GRACANICA - Vladeta Kostic, leader of the Citizens' Initiative Srpska, urged on Friday all Serb MPs in the Kosovo parliament, as well as the MPs representing other minorities, to walk out of the parliament because of the announced amendments to the election law.

At the protest of the Gracanica municipal employees, Kostic said that the protest has been staged on behalf of all those who are against the bill of amendments to the Law on General Elections, which the parliament and the government of Kosovo are trying to impose.

"This election law signifies the administrative cleansing of Serbs in Kosovo. With this election law, the government and the parliament of Kosovo are showing that they do not want Serbs in Kosovo or in the Kosovo institutions," said Kostic.

Nenad Rikalo, the only Serb member of the Kosovo central election commission, cautioned earlier that if the Kosovo parliament passed the bill, Serbs' rights would be reduced in a number of aspects.

The number of eligible Serb voters would be reduced, and the control of the electoral process would then be carried out mostly by Albanian parties. Besides that, the internally displaced Serbs who are now living in other parts of Serbia would then face even more difficult procedure for registering and exercising their right to vote and, finally, the number of seats for Serbs and other minorities in the parliament would be permanently slashed, as the reserved seats would be abolished, he underlined.

Amendments to the election law envisage that only those holding Kosovo's citizenship would have the right to vote, which means that only those who have documents issued by the Kosovo Interior Ministry would be able to register in the electoral roll. That would diminish...