Project Director of the Coalition „Pod lupom“ Mr. Dario Jovanovic said this proposal was largely incorporated into the proposal of the Club of Representatives of „Nezavisni blok“ in the state parliament.”
“This proposal to change and amend the Election Law has been sent to all parliamentarians – 42 MPs and 15 delegates. „Nezavisni blok“ reacted the first and entire document forwarded into the further procedure,” Jovanović explained.
Coordinator for Public Policy of the Coalition “Pod lupom“ Mrs. Jelena Tanaskovic-Mićanović noted this proposal has been sent to all parliamentarians at the state level.
“It contains modifications regarding introduction of the function of the independent president of the polling station committee, public announcement of the names of all members of the polling station committee, in the name of which political subject they were appointed into polling station committee, in order to fight against the trade with seats in the polling station committees,” Tanasković-Mićanović pointed out. Tanasković-Mićanović also added that she anticipate elections will be nullified at those polling stations where an excess number of ballots is found once the ballot boxes are opened.
The possibility to introduce new technologies, to extent the circle of people having the right to file complaints, including non-party observers as well as candidates from political entities within the list, has also been anticipated.
“We have also anticipated the extension of the law in the part regulating the repetition of elections in order to anticipate actions in the case election process is interrupted at polling stations, which was inspired by the situation occurred in Stolac last October,” Tanaskovic-Mićanović said.
She said the proposal has already been adopted by the Constitutional Law Commission of the House of Representatives of the state parliament and sent into the further parliamentary procedure. It should have been addressed at the yesterday’s session of the House of Representatives, but the session is postponed.
“According to meetings held to date with representatives of the clubs of delegates in both Houses of Parliament of BiH, they supported all recommendations that we presented. We hope this support will also be expressed once these recommendations are in the procedure of adoption” said Tanaskovic-Mićanović.
She noted that other proposals, which were or will be sent into the parliamentary procedure, contain other important recommendations of the Coalition “Pod lupom”, such as introduction of a ballot scanner and voter identification at polling stations.
Coalition “Pod lupom” also presented an online advocacy platform tool. Mr. Jovanovic explained that citizens will be able to easily send recommendations/e-mails to parliamentarians in just “three clicks” on their PCs. In this way citizens will be able to reach parliamentarians and transmit information with them, if parliamentarians would be interesting to do so.
“In order to involve as many citizens as possible and to make an additional pressure on parliamentarians in the state parliament so to adopt technical improvements to the election process, we will provide an opportunity to citizens to address parliamentarians and members of the Central Election Commission, by sending them a recommendation which they consider to be the most important one, via using an online advocacy platform tool” Jovanovic said.
On this occasion, IT Expert of the Coalition “Pod lupom” Mr. Mersad Avdić presented an online advocacy platform and explained the procedure to use this tool.
The online advocacy platform is available on following link podlupom.org/mail, whilst the proposal to change and amend the Election Law of BiH can be downloaded here.
