Propaganda Must Cease
by editor-in-chief and the editorial board
Nasa Borba, Beograd, FR Yugoslavia, 11/27 1996
Belgrade - "Article 34 of the law on the territorial organization
of the Republic of Serbia and the local self-government, prescribes that pre-election
propaganda in the public media and election gatherings must cease at least 48
hours before the election," says the letter which has been faxed from the City
Electoral Commission to our offices.
"Since the repeated elections for the deputies in the Belgrade city hall in the
precincts where the previous round of elections had been cancelled are supposed
to take place on November 27, 1996, starting at 7 o'clock a.m., election propaganda
in the media should have stopped on Sunday, November 24, 1996 at midnight."
The letter continues: "As your newspaper has continued with election propaganda
after the deadline prescribed by the law, the City electoral Commission WARNS
you that you are breaking electoral rules and making the legality of the repeated
elections for the Belgrade city hall questionable."
Nasa Borba's response
How long should we remain silent?
We are heartened in the knowledge that the City Electoral Commission has
again started to communicate with our newspaper, since its president Radomir
Lazarevic had until now several times refused to respond to our questions
about important aspects of the commission's activities. For example,
about the regularity of all that this commission has done since the November
17 elections.
We would like to inform Mr. Lazarevic about several facts:
- On the day when he sent us the warning, state-controlled newspapers
published articles with the following titles: "Left wins more mandates",
"Triumph for Socialists", (Vecernje Novosti), "Even more convincing
Socialist victory", "Socialists in the lead" (Politika Ekspres).
- We do not engage in election propaganda, as the CEC warning states, but we
report about the demonstrations of the citizens in Belgrade, Nis, Kragujevac,
Uzice... And about unprecedented vote rigging and lawlessness in which CEC
is also taking part, as was asserted by a judge in the Serbian Constitutional
Court.
Maybe CEC thinks that the demonstrations should be covered with a shroud of
silence but in that case they are barking up a wrong tree. The commission
should first silence hundreds of thousands of protesters in the streets.
Finally, we would like to remind that Nasa Borba dutifully observed
pre-electoral silence before the elections of November 3 and 17. Now the
situation is much more confusing: voting took place on Sunday in Vojvodina, on
Monday in Serbia and today in Belgrade. In the pre-electoral silence still on?
How long should we stay quiet?
Translated on 12/4/96
