Izvor: N1 televizija, 29.Maj.2018, 09:36 (ažurirano 02.Apr.2020.)
Man admits buying votes in Serbia’s elections
A man identified only as a “group leader” has told police in Serbia’s northern province of Vojvodina he had taken part in bribing people to vote for the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) in the last years’ local elections.
The man from the province’s town of Vrbas repeated his testimony to Vojvodina’s Research and Analytical Centre (VOICE), the Centre said on Tuesday.
Following >> Pročitaj celu vest na sajtu N1 televizija << the statement, the police started its probe into an opposition party’s allegation that during the May 2107 local elections, the SNS activists paid people a per-diem of some 8.5 Euros to vote for the Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s party.
The man confessed that after an SNS activist had approached him, he was driving farmers to the voting booths instead to the fields and had paid them for voting.
“… I told them (the farmers) that who votes for the SNS would get a per-diem without working. Not all of them accepted, but those who did got the money,” the man told the VOICE, adding he did not see where there was a corruption since there was no coercion. “Who wanted, voted and got the money.”
He said that the police told him they could check anything he said on a polygraph, and thus he had answered all their questions.
The man explained that the man who told him he was from the SNS had distributed the money after the voting.
He added it seemed he would be the only culprit in buying some 50 votes, while “I know many who did the same.”
The opposition party “It Was Enough” filed criminal charges for buying votes against an anonymous individual following the inspection of voting material when their controllers discovered “a mysterious codes” like triangles, letters, numbers and crosses added to the voting papers.
The inspection showed that the codes were added to the votes for the SNS and its coalition partner The Movement of Socialists.
The SNS denied any wrongdoing and said the “accusations were absurd”.
It turned out that the coded voting papers exceeded 5.5 percent of the turnout and were over 13 percent of a total number of votes the SNS got.
The SNS list “Aleksandar Vucic – Faster, Stronger, Better" got over 40 percent of the votes in Vrbas.
