At the Municipal Counting Center in Mitrovica The counting of votes in the runoff for mayor of Mitrovica held on Sunday has been suspended. Although there has been no public statement from the responsible institutions, sources from Koha indicate that the counting was suspended due to suspicions of vote manipulation.
This source told Koha that the Police and the Prosecution were also at the center.
KOHA has tried to contact the Central Election Commission but no one has responded. The police have referred us to the Prosecutor's Office for a response, but they have not responded either.
Meanwhile, the director of the Directorate for Agriculture and Rural Development in this municipality, Ferdi Kadriu, said in a post: on Facebook that during the morning shift, ballots with different serial numbers from the respective class were identified.
According to him, the second shift is currently on duty, but the process has been interrupted by law enforcement and justice agencies.
"Yesterday the voting process in our city ended, while today the recount of ballot boxes began at the Municipal Counting Center. During the morning shift, ballots with serial numbers different from the respective class were identified. The second shift is currently on duty, but the process has been interrupted by law enforcement and justice agencies. The tellers have left the hall and work has been suspended. This situation is serious and deserves everyone's attention. The will of the citizens is the foundation of the election of local government and this will must not be deformed. From the beginning of the campaign to the unusual number of voters in the run-off, strong suspicions have been raised which are taking concrete form today," he wrote.
PDK MP Artan Behrami has previously written about this. He said that Faton Peci's victory in South Mitrovica is fabricated.
So far, 25 out of a total of 105 polling stations have been counted in the municipal counting centers in Mitrovica.
Faton Peci from Vetëvendosje, according to preliminary CEC results, emerged victorious over PDK candidate Arian Tahiri, with a lead of 2315 votes.
At the moment of the interruption of the counting and verification of votes in the Mitrovica Central Election Commission, Faton Peci of the Vetevendosje Movement leads with 50.19% or 4.186 votes, while Arian Tahiri of the Democratic Party of Kosovo - PDK has received 49.81% or 4.154 votes.
These results do not include conditional votes, those of people with disabilities, and voting outside Kosovo.
The CEC has announced that the final results for the elections in 18 municipalities will be announced in 10 days at the latest, while the certification of the results for municipal assemblies will take place after all the reviews of complaints have been completed at the ECAP and which may eventually end up in the Supreme Court.
CEC: Some ballots were printed with a technical error
The Central Election Commission, through a press release after the interruption of vote counting in Mitrovica, said that Based on information received from the Municipal Election Commissions in Gjakova and South Mitrovica, it was determined that in some of the ballot packs there was an error in printing one of the ballot elements, specifically in the polling station code.
Regarding this issue, the Central Election Commission announced that it has communicated with the company responsible for printing the ballots, which has acknowledged the possibility that the error occurred in the mechanical printer that stamps the variable data. The company has confirmed that in the coming days it will prepare an official clarification regarding this case.
"It is important to note that the total number of printed ballots has been accurately recorded. Furthermore, for each polling station, the printed ballots have serial numbers marked on the ballot papers, which fully match the number of ballots received and verified so far in the Municipal Center of South Mitrovica and Gjakova. The Central Election Commission assures the public, voters and all stakeholders involved in the electoral process that this technical error does not in any way affect the integrity of the voting process or vote counting, as the ballots contain numerous security elements that guarantee that they cannot be falsified or copied," the announcement states.
PDK refuses to return to the Counting Center: We will not break the law
Jahir Sumiqi, the PDK leader in the South Mitrovica NCC, said that the prosecutor in the case, Njazi Rexha, has requested the continuation of the counting, but the PDK and its coalition partners will continue to boycott the process and that, according to him, they will not violate the law.
Sumiqi mentioned that more than 20 polling stations have moved from classroom to classroom or from polling station to polling station, which ballots in most cases belong to the Vetëvendosje Movement.
"35 ballot boxes were counted, of which over 20 polling stations moved from classroom to classroom, or from polling station to polling station. It is an organized engineering that we have encountered substantiated evidence during the vote counting. Over 20 ballots were found with different serial numbers, so the serial number differs from the polling station number, so mainly the ballots moved from the "Migjeni" school to "Abdullah Shabani" and from the University to the Zhabar school," said Sumiqi.
He added that there are also ballots with two stamps and ballots where the serial number of the ballot does not match that of the polling station.
"The ballots that have been found that have moved from polling station to polling station, mainly about 70-80 percent of them are from VV. There are also some ballots with PDK votes, but they are few. We suspect that they were made to cover the traces of this engineering that has never been seen before in the history of elections in Kosovo. The serial number of the ballot does not match the number of the polling station. I got one of the polling stations with a different serial number, while I was counting a polling station with a different number. There are ballots that have two seals, so which are sealed twice," said Sumiqi.
Meanwhile, only representatives of the Vetëvendosje Movement are inside the NCC premises, but it is not known whether the counting process will continue.
Bajqinovci: PDK is trying to overturn the result in Mitrovica through the Prosecutor's Office
Vetevendosje Movement MP, Mefail Bajqinovci said that after the defeat in Mitrovica, PDK is trying to overturn the result through the prosecution.
He wrote in a Facebook post that this work is over and that, according to him, the citizens have had their say.
"Usually when they lose, they seek salvation from the Constitutional Court or the prosecution. But this time, not even the system can give them back what the people took from them," he wrote.