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SARAJEVO, June 27 (FENA) - Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) organized today in Sarajevo a conference entitled “Financing Political Parties: Perspectives of the Legal Framework and Monitoring”, whose special focus was on the necessary improvement of the Law on Political Party Financing, especially in relation to international recommendations and the fact that this is one of the priorities set out in the opinion of the European Commission.
TI BiH has also presented a draft Amendment Act that was made in consultation with representatives of the competent institutions.
The head of the OSCE Mission to BiH, Ambassador Bruce Berton, told reporters before the start of the conference that confidence in the country's elections is fairly low. One of the main reasons is the financing of political parties.
“The Office for Democratic Institutions is part of the OSCE and they have been monitoring elections in this country for years. That office gave a recommendation to make amendments to the Election Law. This is the same recommendation that we made after the 2014 and 2010 elections. Based on this, one can conclude that not much has changed,” Ambassador Berton said.
He recalled that in a recent opinion issued by the European Commission, this Recommendation of the OSCE Office is among the most important and is listed on the list of 14 things that need to be urgently implemented.
According to him, these amendments need to be implemented as soon as possible in order to increase transparency, to implement the recommendations of the OSCE and the European Commission, and to restore citizen confidence in the electoral system.
Transparency International Executive Director in BiH Ivana Korajlić said that the misuse of public funds, institutions, public functions for the purpose of the pre-election campaign is not defined either by the Election Law or by the Law on Financing Political Parties, “which is why we have a situation where huge assets acquired through public procurement and various other types of budget allocations or from public companies and institutions are being used to finance parts of electoral campaigns of political parties.“
He added that one of the amendments to the Law on Financing of Political Parties, made by Transparency International in BiH in consultation with relevant institutions, contains one of the proposals to directly prohibit these activities through the Law On Party Financing. This will also have to be done through changes to the Election Law, in the part governing the election campaign.
According to her, very little willingness of the parties exists to introduce key changes and prevent this practice, especially in the area of misuse of public funds, “because each responder leaves the possibility of withdrawing funds from different sides”.
(FENA) L. N.
