Over the past 24 hours, several citizens of the Republic of Serbia living in the diasporahave contacted the Serbian Times editorial office and said they want to vote in the elections, but their attempts to obtain information from Serbian diplomatic missions in several countries across multiple continents have so far been unsuccessful.
No one is answering the phones or responding to emails at Serbia’s embassies and consulates in Madrid (which we already reported on yesterday), Paris, Berlin, Bern, Chicago, Jakarta (Indonesia), Barcelona, the United Arab Emirates…
ovana Mićić contacted us from Manila, Philippines. She says that the Philippines fall under the jurisdiction of the Serbian Embassy in Indonesia, where they have been unable to obtain any information for days:
“Ambassador Ivana Golubović Duboka, who covers the ASEAN countries, has disappeared without a trace. It seems that her only job is to promote EXPO. We have organized ourselves and there are enough of us to open a polling station in Jakarta. We are prepared to travel to Indonesia, but for 10 days now no one from the embassy has responded to our emails or even confirmed that they received our request. Today I also tried calling them by phone. A telephone operator answered a couple of times, and it was entirely in Indonesian. A Serbian embassy, and the operator answers in Indonesian — neither Serbian nor English!”
Jovana, however, added that they would not give up:
“I have all the emails I sent, which I plan to forward to the students, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Republic Electoral Commission and my polling station in the Zvezdara municipality in Belgrade. There are about 20 of us from Southeast Asia waiting for a response from the embassy. We have our own group and a record of how many of us have submitted requests, and we are ready to see this through to the end!”
Igor Jovanović lives in Switzerland and says that he has been waiting for a response from the embassy in Bern for a week regarding his request to vote:
“I sent the request by email to konzul@ambasadasrbije.ch on September 14, together with a copy of my passport. To this day, I have not received a response. I did everything according to the procedure. Is the embassy obligated to respond to the request? Can I vote abroad even without receiving a response?” Jovanović asks.
A group of students from Finland also contacted us, saying that their fellow citizens from that country are experiencing a problem in Berlin:
“Several of our friends from Finland will be tourists in Berlin during the elections, where they tried to register to vote, but no one has responded to their applications for days, even after they sent them a second time. If you can, please write about this. This is a disaster!” the students from Finland said.
Nataša Stojković has a similar problem with the embassy in Berlin:
“I have sent my application to the Embassy for the third time, but no one is responding. They are not answering the phone either,” she claims.
Mina Unković has the same problem with the Serbian Embassy in the UAE.
“I sent them an email with my request and followed the entire procedure, but no one has responded for days.”
Ljubica Milijević lives in Florida and tried to get information from the Serbian Consulate in Chicago about whether she has to vote in Washington or can also vote in Chicago, where she was planning to travel.
“They did not respond to my email for days, so in the end I decided to join the group in Miami. There are more than a hundred of us here, and we will send the Embassy a request to open a polling station for us. We hope we will succeed and that there will be no obstruction,” Milijević says.
Like those in Miami, our compatriots around the world are trying to apply for the opening of new polling stations in cities where there are no diplomatic missions.
So far, they are having a difficult time, and there is not a single confirmed case that the embassies have officially responded to these requests.
Lidija Macanović contacted us from Barcelona, once again confirming yesterday’s Serbian Times report that the embassy in Madrid has stopped all contact with citizens who want to vote:
“There is no polling station in Barcelona where we could vote. We have written to the Embassy in Madrid several times, but no one responds to our messages,” Lidija says.
A similar situation occurred in Slovenia, where a group of people led by Bojan Veličković tried to open polling stations in Maribor and Koper.
“The Embassy and consulates did not send confirmations to people who registered to vote for days, and regarding our requests to open new polling stations, we received a response from the consul that Slovenia does not allow more than one polling station to be opened, which turned out not to be true,” Veličković claims.
Namely, he says that under Slovenian law it is possible to open additional polling stations, but the Serbian Embassy must submit a request to Slovenia’s Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, which gives its approval.
“The consul is trying to deceive us, but we will not give up,” Veličković said, adding that after he and several other people went to the Embassy, it finally began sending confirmations to people who had registered to vote.
Judging by everything, some Serbian diplomats need to be forced to do their jobs.
We remind you that deliberately obstructing citizens in exercising their right to vote is a criminal offense.
Article 155 of Serbia’s Criminal Code (“Violation of Voting Rights”) clearly stipulates that anyone who, with the intention of preventing another person from exercising their right to vote, unlawfully fails to register them in the voter list or otherwise prevents them from voting faces a prison sentence of up to one year. If force or threats are used, the prescribed sentence is three months to three years in prison.
In addition, Article 159 (“Preventing the Holding of a Vote”) provides for a prison sentence of up to three years for any unlawful obstruction of the electoral process.
Ladies and gentlemen diplomats, think twice before committing these criminal offenses…
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Source: Antonije Kovačević, Foto: AI prompt by Serbian Times
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