Update: turnout on the first day of voting is somewhere over seventeen percent. So that means the govement needs at least another 32 or so percent of the votes tomorrow if they want the constitution accepted by the people.
We’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, check out East Ethnia and Estavisti for some new analysys.
—It’s been all over the news these days, so you have probably heard by now – we are voting whether to accept or not the new constitution draft today and tomorrow. Yes, two days.
That is, some of us are voting, some of us are boycotting, myself included. I already elaborated on my reasons for boycott (or saying no, whichever you prefer) in one of the previous posts, and in one of the following comments.
In order for constitution draft to be accepted 3.319.693 people have to vote ‘yes’. Since the citizens of Serbia are famous for disagreeing on almost all kinds of questions, a whole lotta political persuasion was necessarry in order to get the majority to vote ‘yes’. Hence all the major political parties joined forces and invited their voters to give support. Huge public campaing sponsored from state budget was raging previous days with a bunch of TV and paper ads, street billboards and basically everywhere, celebrities inviting folks to vote ‘yes’ because it’s ‘for the good of Serbia’, because ‘there is nothing more beautifull than Serbia’ and because ‘it’s our civic duty’ ‘because we will get rid of Milosevic’s constitution’ .
Small number of NGOs, minor political parties and activists invited people to boycott or to say ‘no’ to constituion draft because ‘there wasn’t any public debate’ ‘the draft was made in secrecy’, because there are some dubious voting rules imposed by the goverment: voting two days, more ballots than necessarry, only representatives of pro-constitution parties will guard the ballots etc. ‘because the draft puts the local jurisdiction above the European’ and last, but not least, because there are some serious flaws in the constitution draft that could have been avoided if the constitution makers organized a public debate.
European Union and most other international relevant factors hope that the constitution will be accepted because the draft is better than the current constitution. Frankly, i don’t think the world gives a damn anymore about us and that the expectations are so low that they would be satisfied with anything different than Milosevic constitution.
Current situation: around 10 percent of the voters showed up at the polls until 14h.
We will keep track of the following news regarding the voting on the blog, so come back again later or following days to see more texts and analisys.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I think Europe does give a damn – and unfortunately I their main focus in the new constitution is the fact that it apparently proclames Serbia’s sovereignity over Kosovo. (I have not read the constitution myself) This is especially true of countries where there is a high number of Kosovo immigrants speaking out. The fact that it is no longer Milosevic’s constitution is totally overshadowed seeing as the proclamation of sovereignity over Kososvo is perceived to be in line with his reign. In a world where perception is half the battle, it would have been wiser to keep away from Kosovo in the constitution (at least until a final decision was made, and yes I understand the pre-electoral appeal of addressing this now) and focus on issues that are key to further development and regulation of Serbia…. And from what I hear, joining the EU will be unconstitutional? Not that I’m particularly for the EU, but why not cross that bridge when it comes, huh? I mean, keeping options open would have made more sense, and again, there are more pressing issues to be dealt with. Is there any way, that if this new constitution is rejected, that a new one could be drafted, properly, with imput from the people and some kind of debate on what priority regulations should be?
Joining the EU is not unconstitutional, but the constitution will definately have to change prior to entering EU, because it overrides European jurisdiction, that is, it doesn’t mention it. Plus “the human rights” are not defined in the new constitution, as if it is some sort of self-explainatory thing and everybody knows what it is.
But that’s not the key issue, because who knows when we will enter the EU, if ever. Kosovo is the issue, and not so because of the inclusion of it in the preamble, but the fact that the Kosovo Albanians are officialy excluded from the total number of voters in order to make the referendum work more easily. I think that what goverment is actualy saying with this is: Serbia wants Kosovo, but it doesn’t want Albanians. Now, this was certainly true in the past 15 or so years, but now we are making it official by putting it in the constitution, and that is dangerous and it sends a foul picture about Serbia and it’s citizens to the world.
Btw, the new results are out: around 26 percent of the voters came out to the polls untill 11h. At this rate the percentage will reach somewhere under 50 percent at the end of the day.
Since there is no pre-referendum and most certainly no during-referendum silence, the campaign still goes on in all forms – as we speak the movie “Battle for Kosovo” is being shown at the most popular TV station in Serbia.