“Ballots will not be status neutral,” said Nenad Rikalo, Serbian member of the Central Election Commission, ahead of the central elections in Kosovo. If Serbs want more seats in the Assembly, beside ten guaranteed, the Serbs will have to have at least 70,000 votes. If you take into account that the electoral roll has 130,000 Serbs, the numbers are virtually unattainable. 

How is it possible that the Albanians, on the eve of the election campaign, introduced some new rules related to the electoral threshold? 

This situation is not totally clear from the legal point, because of the amendments to the Constitution of Kosovo. Moreover, neither the Constitution nor the law clearly determined many things about guaranteed seats. In this situation, the Serbs were definitely at a loss. 

Serbs in Kosovo and Serbia expected that the international community will react. It seems that there was no adequate response? 

Since 1999, the international community was exclusively on the side of the Albanians. Situations when they want to support the Serbs are extremely rare. Unfortunately, the same rules were applied in this case. 

Is there any chance for changing the CEC decision? Is it realistic that Kosovo coat of arms will be removed from the ballots?  

The ballots have already been printed and there is no technical ability, or political will to change that. In these elections, the electoral material will obviously not be status neutral. 

So, the CEC did not react to the request of the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija? 

CEC only reacted to the remarks on the composition of electoral committees in the north, so that everything returned to the way it was in the local elections. But even in this case, the composition of electoral committees in the north does not reflect the ethnic composition of the population, because there are lots of Albanian members. 

The CEC accepted only about 13,000 out of 30,000 requests of displaced persons to vote. When you expect their votes? 

Voting of displaced persons in central Serbia was completed, and their votes should be received till 6 June.