Petkovic congratulates the Serb List and the Serbian people for demonstrating the strength of unity and solidarity

The Director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija, Petar Petkovic, congratulated the Serb List this evening on its result in Kosovo’s snap parliamentary elections, emphasizing that both the party and the Serbian people had demonstrated the strength of unity and solidarity and that, despite pressure and what he described as the terror of Albin Kurti’s authorities, there would be no retreat.

“I would like to congratulate our brave and resolute Serbian people and our Serb List, who have once again demonstrated the power of Serbian unity and solidarity by winning all ten parliamentary seats through Serbian votes in today’s elections, securing more votes for the Serb List than in December of last year. I emphasize that in Serbian communities, the Serb List won an absolute majority and all ten parliamentary mandates, while at the same time Kurti’s electoral engineering is once again at work, using a well-tested formula to secure a parliamentary seat for his servant Nenad Rasic through Albanian votes, with the intention of taking it away from the Serb List and the Serbian people,” Petkovic said in a statement.

He stressed that the Serbian people had clearly demonstrated through their votes that they place their trust solely in their state, Serbia, and in President Aleksandar Vucic, and that they wish to be represented exclusively by the Serb List. He noted that voter turnout in Serbian communities exceeded 50 percent.

“Kurti plans to steal one mandate from the hands of the Serbian people through Albanian votes and hand it to his favorite, Nenad Rasic, who received votes in exclusively Albanian areas from which Serbs were ethnically cleansed long ago. For that reason, Rasic neither can nor ever will represent the honorable Serbian people. Despite the pressure, terror, arrests of respected community leaders and directors, blackmail, and the blatant violence endured by our people, as well as by the activists and officials of the Serb List during this election campaign and throughout the years of Kurti’s anti-Serb administration, they have shown that there is no retreat and that they remain devoted to their state, Serbia, and to the Serbian tricolor,” Petkovic stated.

He also pointed out that the extent of Albin Kurti’s and, as he put it, “his satellites’” fear of the Serb List and Serbian unity was reflected in the detention of two innocent Serbs from the Municipality of Pec—Milos Dimitrijevic and Ranko Zdravkovic—who, he stressed, were detained on election day without any grounds or evidence.

“They share the fate of the arrested Serbian representatives from Gracanica and have become targets of the regime in Pristina simply because they stood up for Serbian interests and because Kurti wanted to intimidate the Serbian people. However, he has failed, just as he will fail in his attempt to tarnish and break these honorable Serbs,” Petkovic concluded.

Earlier this evening, Serb List President Zlatan Elek announced that the party had won 42,166 votes in Serbian communities, while Nenad Rasic’s party received 3,411 votes. He also noted that Pristina was once again engaging in political engineering by adding votes from Albanian-majority areas to Rasic’s tally.

The election day was marked by overall lower turnout than in the December elections, but also by high voter participation in Serbian communities.