The Chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC), Kreshnik Radoniqi, said that the institution he leads still does not officially know what happened, following media reports regarding the postal votes of expatriates in Croatia.
A day earlier, the Basic Prosecution Office in Pristina said it had launched investigations following reports that Kosovo's ambassador to Croatia, Martin Berishaj, is suspected of being involved in the illegal transportation of diaspora mail-order votes for the February 9 parliamentary elections.
"Officially, we still don't know anything. We've also heard from the media, there are also words from the CEC, but officially we still don't know what happened. It remains to be confirmed in the later stages," said Radoniqi when asked by journalists after the CEC meeting on February 7.
Radoniqi said that the CEC has appointed staff from Kosovo embassies to withdraw votes from the polling stations.
"But I don't know exactly how the procedure went there," he said, referring to the reported situation in Croatia.
However, during the meeting, Alban Krasniqi from the ruling Vetevendosje Movement said that he considers the reports about this event as "an attempt to denigrate the integrity of the CEC, whether of the MFA or of the ambassador in question."
He said that thanks to the CEC and diplomatic staff, voter registration, postal voting, and the delivery of envelopes to diplomatic missions from postal addresses were made possible, after the failure of the process of signing a contract with an economic operator to send them by mail to Kosovo.
"I also congratulate the Prosecution for the work it is doing and let the Prosecution come out as soon as possible, since it has shown an extraordinary interest in this matter, of course also due to political and external pressures, very good, let it look at each process, the Prosecution is free to verify, investigate and see that there is absolutely nothing wrong with anything," said Krasniqi.
He even demanded that the CEC present all information about this case to the public.
"Let the public be told that those 10-20 envelopes, whatever they may have been, were withdrawn due to the pressure from the mail they were under to withdraw from the authorized teams," he said.
On January 9, postal voting began for Kosovo citizens living abroad for the Kosovo parliamentary elections, which will be held on February 9.
Of the 104,924 voters who registered to vote outside Kosovo, 84,525 of them chose to vote by mail, according to the Central Election Commission (CEC).
So, 67,421 have registered to send the ballot package to the CEC mailbox outside Kosovo, while 17,104 would send the ballot package to the CEC mailbox in Kosovo.
But, on February 3, the CEC issued a clarification, saying that due to deadlines, it was not possible to sign a contract with the postal services operator.
Therefore, the CEC said that the withdrawal of postal deliveries from the Commission's mailboxes and the delivery of election materials to diplomatic missions will be done via land routes by CEC officials, with the assistance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora.
"So far, in several cases, the CEC has withdrawn packages of ballots, which were sent to stay temporarily in various diplomatic missions, respectively in their security rooms, where they are constantly monitored by cameras. These withdrawals were carried out in a transparent process, with prior notification of observers from political entities, who did not identify any objections in the withdrawal protocols and in the presence of CEC officials," the February 3 announcement said.
Otherwise, for the first time, Kosovo will organize physical voting on February 8 in several diplomatic missions abroad./ REL (A2 Televizion)
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