First of all, the Coalition “Pod lupom” strongly condemns the violence in the electoral process. Except for the attack on the President of the Local Election Commission in Stolac, there were more thrusts on the members of polling station committees at PS 026B010 in Pelagićevom physical assault on the president of polling station committee at PS 25A017 in Prozor – Rama, two cases of physical conflicts amongst the voters in Ilijaš and Visoko as well as open threats directed towards the Coalition’s observers.. This kind of behaviour of participants in the electoral process, seriously distorts the integrity of the elections, thus moving BiH away from so far reached democratic standards. We remind that this many cases of violence were not recorded in the past 10 years.
Except in Stolac, electoral process went without problems at the most of the polling stations and it was in the accordance with the BiH Election Law. During the electoral process, the observers reported irregularities at 16 polling stations. At least one case of so-called family voting was recorded at 56% of observed PS, and at 60% of PS 1-5 persons were turned down because they were not found on the excerpt from the Central Voters Register.
Around 32% of the polling stations had at least one recorded case of one person helping voters repeatedly. More than 6 cases of this phenomena were reported at a few of the polling stations. Seven percent of pooling stations had a case of voting without valid identification documents.
The closing of the polling stations mostly went in the accordance with the rules. Most of the polling stations (98,8%) of them were closed by 7:15 p.m., while the rest of them (1,2%) were closed until 8 p.m. Eleven polling stations, which were not closed at 7 p.m., did not enable voting to the citizens who were in front of the polling stations at 7 p.m. At 98,7% of the polling stations, all of the members of polling station committees were present during closure of the polling stations. At 26 of polling stations, unauthorised persons were allowed to enter the polling station after it was closed, during the votes counting.
The Coalition’s observers are still observing votes counting at the polling stations, while 141 observer is observing Local Election Commissions.
Coalition observed Elections at 2,500 polling stations, while mobile teams visited 893 polling stations until 8 p.m., which makes 3,393 observed places in total (65% of the polling stations).
Until 9 p.m. Coalition’s observers reported 105 critical situations.
The reports of irregularities are mostly related to systematic violation of the BiH Election Law and implementation acts of the Central Election Commission, 22 of which (family voting, abuse of helping with the voting), 12 serious irregularities (more persons voting more than once, attempts to take polling materials out of the polling stations). There were 33 reported cases of intimidating or pressuring voters. There were 3 polling stations that reported so-called Bulgarian train.
Based on these reports, Coalition’s observers submitted more than 80 complaints about regularity of the elections, out of which one part was not written into the minutes because polling station committees did not allow it, although they were obligated to by the Law.
The Coalition received 118 reports from the citizens, most of which are related to pressuring, intimidating, bribing, persuasion, votes buying n 45 cases, and 28 cases of violations of electoral silence.
Information about the counting process of the ballot papers and determination of the results, will be given to the public at the press conference tomorrow at 11 a.m.
For any additional information please contact the public relations coordinator of the Coalition „Pod lupom“, Jovana Kljajić via email pr@podlupom.org or at 033 268 160 and 065 252 016.
