Leader of the Civic Initiative Freedom, Democracy, Justice (GI SDP) and a candidate for mayor of North Mitrovica, Oliver Ivanović, said at the press conference that the atmosphere during the pre-election campaign in Kosovo resembles the one before the 5 October 2000 in Serbia, Serbian media reported.

Ivanovic said that the pressure continues on the people from his list and from CI “For our Zvečan” led by Doctor Dragiša Milović, and according to him, the latest development are the invitations of the directors of all subordinates to the direct talks.

“Suggestions were provided to all heads of departments, directors, to keep their employees under absolute control, i.e. to use repetition and make threats to break their resistance, and to direct their votes towards the Srpska Lista. It’s not good and it represents legal and political violence,” Ivanović said.

“Our state can and must resolve this situation. No political or private interest cannot be more significant than the national one” he stressed.

The candidate for the mayor of Zvečan municipality, Dragiša Milović said that the employees in the public institutions are being called and pressured and are being dismissed from their workplaces in case one of their family members is “in the list of the opposite side”, which happened to his wife.

“My wife, a long-time physician, a specialist in physical medicine, was demoted from the position of the head of the department after 17 years of specialized work, and the new director of the Health House in Zvečan, who was appointed a few days ago, Vasić, took away her right to be on-call physician. All kinds of (pressures), from the burning of the car, verbal attacks on my daughter, and now the dismissal of my wife ... what else should we expect?” Milović said.

He stressed that regardless of everything, he would continue his peaceful “man-to-man” campaign.

In the meantime, on Thursday afternoon, KoSSev news portal contacted the recently appointed Director of the Health House in Zvečan, Doctor Ivan Vasić, who is also a candidate of Srpska Lista at the local elections in Zvečan and asked him to comment on the allegations made by Doctor Dragiša Milović.

Vasić told KoSSev that in the case of Milović’s wife, Doctor Gordana Milović, everything was done according to the rules and regulations and stressed that “she was not dismissed but the annex of the contract was amended”.

Vasić explained that according to their internal rules, she cannot be a head of the department, due to the smaller number of the staff in her department and that she received annex of the contract appointing her as the specialist physician. He also cited the rules and explained that she has no right to be an on-call physician.

When asked by KoSSEv whether this means that Doctor Gordana Milović was thus working as the head of the department all these years illegally, Vasić said: “She was the Head of the department, but the previous director of the health house could have tolerated it or not” and added that he decided to work in line with the regulations and to cut the expenditures in order to employ more staff which they need.