Rapajic: The number of Albanians in the north is increasing through house construction and settlement from other municipalities

Program Director of the NGO Center for the Advocacy of Democratic Culture from North Mitrovica, Aleksandar Rapajic, told Kosovo Online that especially in Gracanica, and to some extent also in North Mitrovica, there has been an increase in the number of citizens registered as voters, particularly from the Albanian community.

As he explained, in Gracanica this has been happening after the population census, when a large number of people, although not residing in the territory of the municipality of Gracanica, registered as if they lived there.

“Then, by default, those people were called upon to change their addresses. People who had never voted in Gracanica have now been transferred to vote there because they were counted in the census as living in that municipality,” Rapajic stated.

In North Mitrovica, according to him, more than a thousand new people were added to the voter lists in the previous elections, and he believes that this time the number will be even higher.

“With the construction of houses in the north, partly through return and partly through the settlement of Albanians from other municipalities, the number of Albanians in the city is increasing,” our interlocutor stressed.

He expects that pressures on the Serbian community and problems of this nature will continue up until the day of the local elections on October 12.

“Since the local elections were announced, we have seen enormous pressure, particularly on the Serbian community. There have been attempts to reject candidate lists and to minimize the number of people appointed to polling boards. There is a certain degree of pressure on the Serbian community in order to reduce the number of people who will turn out to vote. I expect there will also be efforts to prevent people from central Serbia from coming to vote, that there will be problems on election day itself, that many people will not appear on the lists because a census was not organized. So, we can expect all sorts of issues,” Rapajic warned.