At a meeting on Monday, the opposition parties and movements agreed that there still were no conditions for free elections, and announced that the final decision on the boycott would be brought if their demands for fair elections were not adopted by mid-September, it was announced after meeting of the opposition leaders.
The participants at this meeting were the representatives of the parties rallied in the Alliance for Serbia, the Movement of Free Citizens, the Democratic Party of Serbia, the New Party, the Social Democratic Party, the Local Front, the initiative Let Us Not Drown Belgrade, the Party of Modern Serbia, representatives of the civic movement 1 out of 5 million, the Community of Vojvodina Hungarians and the Civic Platform.
One of the leaders of the Alliance for Serbia, Janko Veselinovic, told reporters after the meeting that the authorities had not done anything on fulfilling the opposition’s request for free and honest elections and free media, which had been adopted back in December, and that the authorities will be responsible if there are no elections or if there are some elections which are not this in fact.
“We shall use all the possibilities and talks and protests, so as to arrive at honest elections, but very little time is left for fulfilling the opposition’s requests”, Veselinovic said.
In the event that the requests are not adopted by the middle of September, the opposition will bring the decision on boycotting the elections, he said.
Veselinovic reminded that, in the opposition’s requests, the authorities were left a deadline of six to nine months prior to the elections for creating election conditions and concluded that very little time was left for this to be done.
“We have already missed the deadline of nine months and we are drawing dangerously close to the deadline of six months – that is the month of September, and very little time has been left until September”, he reminded.
Veselinovic said that it had been concluded that the talks with the representatives of the authorities which are currently led, represented a round table and that also in the future the representatives of the opposition would attend “every talk at which there could occur a step forward in the fulfilling of conditions for free and fair elections”.
He said that the next round table between the authorities and the opposition should be held on Friday or Saturday, after which the opposition leaders would next week again meet so as to see whether these talks with the authorities had been constructive and to bring a decision on the upcoming steps.
The opposition is of the standpoint that the public should be informed about all the agreements or talks, and “some believe that all of them should be open for the public since the citizens would be able to see who is obstructing the agreement”, he said.
So far, one round table has been held between the authorities and the opposition, with the presence of the civil sector. The meeting was not open to the public, even though the media very quickly found out about it.
