ZAGREB, Feb 13 (Hina) - The Serb People's Council (SNV) is satisfied with preparations and technical prerequisites for Sunday's elections for ethnic minorities' representatives as well as with cooperation with the State Electoral
Commission (DIP), but it is not satisfied with the pre-election campaign which SNV leader Milorad Pupovac said was launched without consultations with minorities' representatives and sufficient funds.
ZAGREB, Feb 13 (Hina) - The Serb People's Council (SNV) is satisfied
with preparations and technical prerequisites for Sunday's elections
for ethnic minorities' representatives as well as with cooperation
with the State Electoral Commission (DIP), but it is not satisfied
with the pre-election campaign which SNV leader Milorad Pupovac said
was launched without consultations with minorities' representatives
and sufficient funds.#L#
"The state and the international community have secured funds for
their bureaucracy, but we had to buy application forms and confirm
them with our own financial means," Pupovac told a news conference on
Friday.
Pupovac, an ethnic Serb parliamentary representative, pointed the
finger at the international community, particularly the OSCE and the
European Commission which, he added, put GONG (a nongovernmental
organisation) in charge of conducting the campaign without consulting
Serb representatives about anything.
Pupovac also said that it was unfair that girls wearing kilts appeared
in GONG's TV clips aimed at informing viewers about the 15 February
ballot, while there were no symbols of national minorities that live
in Croatia.
"We have done our job, and bodies of the state administration that are
organising the election and the international community that assists
them in it are acting as if we did not exist. Next time it would be
better to let the Electoral Commission and us agree on calling the
election while the government and the international community should
have no connection with this," he said.
Pupovac, an MP of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS), said
that his party had its candidates in all electoral units, and that
only in Pula there were opposing candidates.
He called on eligible voters to go to the polls on Sunday when ethnic
minorities are to elect their representatives and their councils as
well as their councillors in municipal and city councils and county
assemblies.
The councils must be the identity of the minority self-rule of Serbs
in Croatia, important for the promotion of minorities in local
authorities and for cooperation with state institutions, the SNV
leader said.
He announced that at his meeting with Croatian Premier Ivo Sanader,
set for this afternoon, he would ask Sanader to call on ethnic
minorities to go to the polls.
Later in the day, the government's public relations office issued a
statement in which Sanader called on members of all ethnic minorities
to go to the polls, urging that their turnout be as high as possible.
(Hina) ms