In the run-up to local elections, scheduled for October 2, Bosnian political candidates and parties have routinely disrespected the election law but the local authorities have failed to prosecute them, Dario Jovanovic, director of “Pod Lupom”, the coalition monitoring the electoral process in Bosnia, told BIRN during an interview.
“We have noticed crucial irregularities by the political parties and candidates during the electoral process,” Jovanovic said, stressing that the irregularities do not threaten the regularity of elections as a whole and that, generally, “the process is functioning.
“These irregularities have almost became a ‘tradition’ since they are repeated in every process in Bosnia,” he said, accusing the authorities of “failing to react properly and to adopt appropriate sanctions”.
Among the most common irregularities that the coalition has registered, Jovanovic notes that many parties started the election campaign before the legal deadline; have traded polling station commission members, and that pressures were exerted on workers in public companies to vote for a determined party. Finally, he drew attention to the inaccuracy of the electoral roll in some areas, which he said might easily be exploited.
“Many parties started their campaign without waiting for the legal start of the electoral campaign, which was fixed for September 2, campaigning via social networks, or organising events in public spaces to promote their candidates and programs,” he explained.
According to Pod Lupom’s findings, people in several municipalities have been pressured into pledging to vote for a specific party, especially if they work in public companies.
“In some cases, political parties have collected signatures inside the working premises of the company, menacing employees that if they don’t vote for them, it will have negative consequences for their jobs,” Jovanovic explained.
He stressed that in small rural communities, another major problem is that lists of voters are out of date, with dead persons not being removed from the register.
“We discovered that employees at the centre for the register of voters [the office in every municipality dealing with this] were consciously not removing deceased voters from the list … which obviously creates justified worries that they might manipulate the elections in this way,” he said.
Jovanovic argued that the most worrying phenomenon of all is the way the parties regularly trade observers’ places inside polling stations.
By law, he recalled, the commissions at polling stations are made up of five observers, chosen from different political parties. In smaller places, there are three observers.
“However, the political parties are exchanging these positions or selling them … so that it is very common, especially in smaller areas, for all the three members in a polling station to come from the same party, which is a major indicator that electoral fraud might occur,” he explained.
Pod Lupom has obtained evidence of this malpractice in 11 municipalities but Jovanovic said he suspected the practice is much more common. “The politicians are not even trying to hide this fact … they justify themselves by saying that everybody does it,” he added.
Authorities failing to take action:
Despite the widespread nature of these violations during the election process, Jovanovic said the authorities are not reacting.
“These irregularities would not be repeated year after year if somebody was punished for them, and maybe imprisoned,” he noted.
Jovanovic explained that the Central Electoral Commission and Prosecutors usually do not investigate illegal acts by parties and candidates, claiming they lack evidence to proceed on single cases.
“They usually ask for the provision of concrete evidence about these infractions … when it comes to electoral misbehaviour, the burden of proof is put on common citizens,” he said.
He noted also that in many cases the law in Bosnia does not envisage effective sanctions that would discourage such acts in any case.
Tackling electoral misbehaviour in Bosnia is of the utmost importance, however, Jovanovic stressed, as even a single vote can influence the result, especially at a local level.
“We saw, during the general elections in 2014, how Milorad Dodik won the position of President of Republika Srpska by only about 1,100 votes,” he recalled.
“At a local level, people can be elected by even 200 votes, so each one literally makes a difference,” he concluded.
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