Monitors Say Vote on Serbian Constitution Is Too Close to Call
LJUBLJANA, Slovenia, Oct. 29 — Estimates by an independent election monitoring group showed Sunday that a vote on Serbia’s new constitution was too close to call.
Official results were not expected until Monday. The monitoring group said its survey showed that 52 percent of voters had approved the document, with a margin of error of two percentage points, making the estimated victory margin statistically insignificant. The proposed constitution needed support from more than 50 percent of voters to pass.
The Center for Free Elections and Democracy, the monitoring group, came up with its figure by interviewing officials at 600 of the country’s 2,000 polling places to learn their vote tallies and by extrapolating from them.
The group also watched voting at those and other polling places to check for irregularities. The Belgrade-based group, which has monitored 10 Serbian elections since 2004, has called those elections correctly.
One of the most discussed provisions of the 206-article constitution declared that the province of Kosovo is an “integral part of Serbia.” The declaration was symbolic, because the fate of the province lies with the United Nations Security Council, which is likely to vote to enable Kosovo’s independence.
Critics of the constitution have said the document would not move the country far enough toward full democracy.
The proposed constitution was drafted and supported by nationalists and pro-democracy reformers in Parliament. Many reformers supported the document despite its flaws because they wanted to make clear to Serbs that they were doing everything they could to hold on to the province.
Reformers feared that the United Nations vote would create a backlash that could lead to gains for the Serbian Radical Party, the leading nationalist party. They also agreed to rush through the drafting of the constitution so it could be in place before the United Nations vote.
Despite the high-profile provision on Kosovo, the document did not seem to excite the populace. Voting was so slow over the weekend that it appeared the constitution might not get the needed votes, which would be a significant embarrassment for the government.
Voting surged late Sunday after an intensive get-out-the-vote campaign in the afternoon. Senior politicians as well as members of the Serbian Orthodox Church issued statements urging people to vote.
“Citizens, get out and circle ‘yes’ for Serbia, ‘yes’ for a better life for every citizen,” President Boris Tadic was quoted as saying by the state-run Tanjug news agency.
Between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., when the polls closed, an estimated 20 percent of Serbia’s electorate went to the polls. Officials of the monitoring group said they recorded an increase in reports of electoral irregularities during that time. The group did not consider the irregularities significant enough to compromise the vote.
The overall turnout was 53.5 percent, according to the group’s survey.
Kosovo is regarded by many Serbs as being central to their national identity. It has been administered by the United Nations since June 1999, when NATO-led troops took control of the province after 78 days of bombing. NATO wrested Kosovo from the hands of Yugoslav security forces accused of committing widespread atrocities against the majority Albanian population.
Kosovo’s future is the subject of United Nations-led negotiations between the Serbian government and ethnic Albanians in the province. The ethnic Albanians want independence, while the Serbian government and the province’s small Serbian community demand that Kosovo remain part of Serbia.
Few Western diplomats say the groups will be able to reach agreement, leaving the decision to the United Nations Security Council, which is expected to impose a settlement in the next several months to enable Kosovo to claim independence.
While much of the constitution’s contents had been heavily criticized by rights groups as contradictory in parts and giving too much power to Parliament, there was little public debate about its contents. The charter would replace one drafted by the authoritarian government of Slobodan Milosevic in 1990.
Serbia’s government worked hard to help ensure the adoption of the new charter. A government-financed publicity campaign urged people to vote “yes,” and voting was held over two days in an attempt to draw Serbia’s election-weary voters to the polls.
Kosovo’s estimated 1.3 million ethnic Albanians were also excluded from the election. Including the Albanians would have increased the number of voters and made it difficult to secure approval of more than 50 percent of the electorate.
“The government gambled,” said Bratislav Grubacic, a leading political analyst and editor of the VIP news agency in Belgrade. “They hoped by putting Kosovo in the constitution, they would manage to draw out the Serbian electorate.”
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