After "Vreme" revealed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not bother to secure additional polling stations abroad, the diaspora voting saga continued in the Republic Election Commission (REC).
On Wednesday (October 7) late in the evening, the ruling majority in RIK it made a "decision to change the decision" of who from the diaspora votes where, but without opening a single new polling station.
Thus, for example, voters from Slovakia - where the embassy is supposedly being renovated so they cannot vote anywhere in Bratislava - are now assigned to vote in Vienna. Those from Cologne, where no polling station has been determined despite the great interest, will go to Dusseldorf.
Or, particularly bizarrely, those from Vancouver on Canada's west coast are assigned to Toronto - a four-and-a-half-hour flight away, and the vote will be held at night, after Serbian time.
Discussion in the RIK
That decision was not welcomed by a large part of REC members who protested that the majority in that body did not first wait for additional discussions with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the eventual opening of additional polling stations.
REC member Ivan Šebek reminded that there is a working group with representatives of the Ministry and told the REC president that he should have waited for the meeting. "Unless you know something I don't," Shebek added.
With this, he clearly alluded to the fear that the Ministry and the majority in the Republic of Croatia will not open additional polling stations, despite the fact that a record 106.000 people from the diaspora registered to vote in the parliamentary elections on October 25.
No one has any doubt that this diaspora is in favor of the Student List, so the government is bent on thwarting it.
The president of the REC, Branislav Dimitrijević, said that the current decision does not prejudge whether there will be more polling stations, but only helps the municipal election commissions to introduce voters from abroad to the appropriate place in the voter list.
More places only in BiH
As "Vreme" revealed earlier this week, the Serbian Ministry, for example, did not even ask Germany to open polling stations in Cologne, Hanover, Nuremberg and Karlsruhe, even though there were more than a hundred registered voters in each of those cities, as prescribed by law.
Instead, voting remained only in embassies and consulates, and it is similar all over the world.
Out of a total of 93 polling stations abroad, which have been confirmed so far, as many as 28 are in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Only in that country did the number of polling stations increase.
There are no polling stations, for example, in Vancouver, San Diego, Abu Dhabi, Cologne, Geneva, Bratislava, Herceg Novi... RIK members who are critical of the authorities calculate that around 30.000 voters abroad are effectively prevented from voting.
This was criticized in an open letter by more than thirty diplomats working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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