News in English     | 19.06.2018. 15:34 |

Hadžiabdić: A record number of registered political entities for the elections

FENA Hana Imamović

SARAJEVO, June 19 (FENA) - More than 120 presidents of municipal and city electoral commissions from 143 municipalities and towns in Bosnia and Herzegovina gathered in Sarajevo today at a two-day conference titled "Towards the 2018 General Elections", organized by the Central Election Commission of BiH (CEC).

As the participants of the two-day conference said at the opening, this conference is an opportunity to talk with representatives of municipal and city election commissions, answer their questions and get acquainted with the by-laws, but also to discuss in more detail the improvements in the results input applications.

These are the applications designed by the CEC in cooperation with the OSCE Mission to BiH, which has hired IT experts from BiH in order to provide for better control, security and efficiency of the system.

The CEC President Irena Hadžiabdić reminded that the CEC has already begun with the preparations for the elections, and that it has received a record number of applications from political entities, The deadline for the coalition application expires today at 16.00 hrs., and so far more than 10,000 applications have been submitted from abroad, adding, that so far, three coalitions have filed a request for participation in the elections.

Hadžiabdić stressed that the polling stations will be closed at 19.00 hrs. Ballots for the four levels of government will counted without electronic devices and scanners. It will be done at the polling stations and everything will again be done manually.

“In terms of securing a better protection from misuse, we are trying to find methods to reduce potential manipulation in that scope of five percent at the polling stations where we had problems in the past.

In the case of 95 percent of polling stations, we expect results around midnight when we are obliged to release them according the law,” said Hadžiabdić.

Hadžiabdić noted that there will be enhanced control procedures at the level of municipal election commissions while inputting the results and a better and more transparent access to all CEC data, better control and security, and the forms will be simplified. Hadžiabdić announced that there will be some other novelties until the day of the elections.

She rejected the claims that IT experts from Russia will be hired in BiH, noting that the CEC has signed standardized memoranda with ten countries including Russia, Ukraine, Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey.

When it comes to the memorandum with Russia, it was signed in 2010, and since 2015, all memoranda have to be approved by the BiH Presidency.

"Our system has never been hacked, although there have been attempts," she said, expressing hope that these elections will be conducted without any problems.

Head of the Council of Europe in BiH, Drahoslav Štefanek also addressed the participants, stressing that the Council of Europe is a co-organizer of this conference, aiming to inform key actors of the electoral process on changes in the by-laws, but also to exchange experiences and discuss the existing problems.

“We are aware of the difficult political context ahead of these elections, in some part due to the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in the Sejdić and Finci case and in the Pilav case. The State Parliament has not yet found a solution to resolve the implementation of the Constitutional Court judgment in the Ljubić case,” said Štefanek, adding that there has been no progress when it comes to the holding of the elections in Mostar.

He believes that in the absence of solutions in the parliamentary bodies at the state and entity levels, more pressure and responsibility will be placed on the Central Election Commission of BiH, adding that the members of municipal and city commissions have a great responsibility in holding of the upcoming elections.

“You are the ones who will check the ballot boxes, who will verify the voters through the entire procedure of the elections in the municipalities and cities, and in the end you are the ones who will count the ballots. Your work will be monitored by a number of local and foreign observers, especially organizations such as the ‘Pod lupom’ Coalition and the OSCE Mission,” concluded Štefanek.

(FENA) S. R.

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