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SARAJEVO, April 24 (FENA) - The general elections conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina in October 2018 have been assessed as partially irregular after the detailed inquiry and research by the Coalition for Free and Fair Elections "Under the Spotlight" (Pod Lupom).
Its members and representatives of the international community emphasize that with the appropriate amendments to the Election Law of BiH, citizens would get back their confidence in the election process.
The final report of the Coalition based on the observations of its members in the October General Elections, was presented today at a conference on the topic "How to reach international standards and prevent election fraud?"
Program Director of the Coalition, Dario Jovanović, citing the report, said that the observers of this association singled out a record number of electoral irregularities since 2014, since the Coalition has started monitoring the elections.
“The impression is that political parties in this country are doing whatever they want and that laws do not apply to them as they do for other citizens. This is facilitated by the indifference of the election administration and investigative bodies in the elimination and processing of electoral irregularities,” it is stated in the summary of the report.
Among the number of registered electoral irregularities, such as unauthorized voter access, buying of votes, misuse of public resources for the purpose of campaigning, outdated voters’ registers in some municipalities, illegal trade in seats in polling boards, etc. The report emphasizes that the massive phenomenon of abuse of personal data is particularly worrying for the purpose of applying for voting by mail, without their knowledge. Hundreds of such cases have been recorded, which the Central Election Commission of BiH forwarded to the competent prosecutor's office.
“Exponential increase in the number of registered voters for voting via mail, especially in some municipalities and cities in BiH, is certainly a signal to the competent authorities to tackle this issue in more detail,” the report stated.
The Coalition gave several recommendations for improving the electoral process in BiH, the first of which should be the implementation of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights ("Sejdić - Finci", "Zornić", "Pilav", "Šlaku"), allowing all citizens of BiH with 18 years of age and above to be granted active and passive voting rights regardless of their ethnicity and place of residence.
Of the 35 recommendations that refer to electoral legislation alone and the implementing acts of the Central Election Commission of BiH, the first one should be to introduce electronic scans of ballots at the polling stations, and the second being introduction of electronic voter identification, a unique barcode reader that will be used to scan valid identification documents to identify voters at polling stations.
It is necessary to shorten all deadlines from the date of announcing the elections to the official and full publication of the final results from the current 180, to 120 days, recommends the Coalition in the report.
Also, another recommendation is that the elections at those polling stations where it has been determined that there were surplus ballots should be annulled, and it is also necessary to reduce the inter-party election threshold for general elections in BiH to ten percent, and equal it with the inter-party election threshold for local elections.
Unjustified withdrawal from the work in the election committee ahead of the election day has to be sanctioned by banning such persons from being engaged in election committees in at least two next election cycles, and to prescribe the keeping of records of such instances at the level of local election administration.
The BiH Central Election Commission should publish information on the received complaints and their decisions on its website in a timely manner.
The Commission needs to pay special attention to the criteria of expertise and experience in conducting the elections when appointing and confirming members of local election commissions.
It is also necessary to specify the responsibility for political entities that conduct election campaigns before the deadline stipulated by law, as well to legally specify the responsibility for entering premature campaign on social networks.
The CEC needs to improve the system of controlling the financial operations of political entities both in the election and non-election years through strengthening the human and technical capacities of the CEC BiH Audit Service, as well as involving other institutions that control the financial operations of legal entities.
There is also a need to introduce the function of the non-partisan president of the polling committee and their deputy, who will be trained and prepared for work in non-election years through special education programs.
Ahead of today's conference where the report was presented to the participants, Ambassador of the United States of America to BiH, Eric Nelson, told reporters that the vote of every citizen is a fundamental element of democracy and that for the sake of fair and democratic elections, it is high time for political leaders in BiH to comply with the ECHR judgments, the recommendations of the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the "Under the Spotlight" Coalition.
“The Embassy of the United States had about a hundred observers in 40 cities and other places in BiH during the October elections. A large number of irregularities reported show the importance of the work of the Coalition,” Nelson stressed, adding that the reforms aimed at strengthening transparency and accountability are there to help the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Ambassador Bruce Berton, Head of the OSCE Mission to BiH, stated that the last elections in BiH had many shortcomings: the equality of each vote is not ensured, the accuracy and completeness of the central voter register is under question, there was large number of invalid ballots, and the secrecy of the vote was not guaranteed.
In addition to this, Berton also underlined that the media were not impartial during the campaign.
The amendments to the Election Law of BiH, Berton concludes, must be completed, which implies that the post-election government must be formed as soon as possible and an appropriate working group must exist, in other words - everything should be done to bring these amendments to the electoral legislation to life.
The European Union is also taking part in the process of helping to improve the electoral process in BiH, said today Elisabet Tomasinec, Head of the Political Department at the EU Delegation to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In addition to the election process, citizens should trust the elected officials, she said, reminding that the European Union has allocated 1.5 million euros for the activities of the Coalition in a three-year or four-year period, since its main function has been the oversight of the election process.
Elisabet Tomasinec also noted that the European Union is ready to provide support, among others, to the Central Election Commission of BiH as well, in order to work on strategic elimination of the shortcomings observed to exist in the election process.
Tomasinec encouraged all the relevant stakeholders to contribute together to adopt positive changes in the regulations before the next elections in BiH.
(FENA) S. R.
