The head of the election observation mission of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), Albert Johnson, said that the parliamentary elections in Serbia will be observed by a core team, a short-term team and a long-term team of observers.
In an online conversation with journalists from Serbia, Johnson said that the core team will have 11 experts, including media, political and election analysts, and that the media monitoring team will have six people who will analyze the media six days a week, which will include in the final report.
Long-term observation
The long-term observation team will have 30 people who will be divided into 15 pairs and observe the elections across the country, and for the short-term team that will observe the polling stations, the voting process and the election counting, 250 people are requested.
According to him, the long-term observers will arrive in Serbia on November 19.
"We are not election police, we are not researchers, but observers and we deal with facts." "The preliminary results will be published the day after the election," Johnson said, adding that the final report with recommendations will be published a few months after the election.
He said that the media is a very important part of election observation and that the media monitoring team monitors print and online media, television and radio stations, that they have all the necessary equipment and speak Serbian.
Meeting with Dacic
As he said, the office of the observation mission was opened on Thursday, today they had a meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivica Dačić, next week they will meet with representatives of the Republic Election Commission, and then with representatives of various institutions, international factors, political parties and civil society organizations .
Johnson pointed out that this is the 17th election observation mission in Serbia and that the same OSCE methodology is used for election observation in all countries.
BG/FoNet
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