Sixteen candidates for MPs in the February 9 parliamentary elections have active indictments, a report by non-governmental organizations presented on Thursday said.
During the presentation of the report "Integrity of candidates, rule of law and good governance", it was stated that on their electoral lists, the Vetëvendosje Movement, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo - Nisma coalition, and the Democratic League of Kosovo have candidates who have problems with the law.
According to Burbuqe Kastrati, a researcher at the FOL Movement, these parties together have 23 people who have problems with the law. This, according to her, means that there are candidates who have active charges or who have been convicted of various criminal offenses in the past.
According to the report by the NGOs Kosovo Institute for Law, FOL Movement and INPO, out of 16 candidates, three of them have more than one active indictment.
The number of indictments against them reaches 20, while the number of criminal offenses reaches 21.
With active indictments, the Vetëvendosje Movement has eight candidates on its list, the AAK-Nisma Coalition seven, and the LDK one candidate for deputies, the NGO report said.
Kastrati said that there are indictments of a corrupt nature, such as abuse of official position or authority. But there are also indictments for illegal possession of weapons, obstruction of an official in the performance of official duty, and assault on an official.
The report also includes data regarding criminal convictions of candidates for the February 9 elections. Eight candidates have been convicted in the past for various criminal offenses.
But they were not prevented from running in the February 9 elections. This is because, according to the Law on General Elections, a person who has been definitively convicted in the last three years for a criminal offense with one or more years of imprisonment cannot run in the elections.
Even in previous elections, there were candidates on the electoral lists with legal problems. At that time, the Central Election Commission did not certify 47 of them because they had been found guilty in the last three years, while 15 people who had legal problems had run in the final electoral list.
28 political entities and one independent candidate are competing in the elections on February 9, 2025. There are a total of 1,280 candidates on the electoral lists for the new parliamentary composition.
These will be the first regular elections that Kosovo has held since declaring independence in 2008. So far, the country has held a series of snap elections. /REL (A2 Televizion)
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