BS
Since the beginning of its election observation mission, the Pod lupom Coalition has recorded a total of 794 election irregularities during the pre-election period. The largest number of irregularities relates to the misuse of public resources and premature campaigning. In addition, since the start of the official campaign, Pod lupom has been monitoring the media with the aim of assessing compliance with the provisions of the Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Code on Audiovisual and Radio Media Services. In the first two weeks alone, 162 potential violations were recorded.
Based on complaints submitted by Pod lupom, the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CEC BiH) has so far imposed 21 sanctions on political parties and candidates, totalling BAM 163,000.
Pod lupom has also been monitoring the online campaigns of political entities since the beginning of the election campaign. A total of 86 profiles of political entities, party officials and candidates have been analysed. The first week of the official election campaign has revealed a significant gap between the volume of political content published on social media and its informational and programme-related content.
During this period, the most active on social media were: SNSD (198 posts), ZPR (169), SDP BiH (138), PSS (129), and US and NiP (109 each). However, the volume of content itself is not the most important factor. Of concern is the fact that, following the analysis, only 7.2% of posts clearly presented the programmes of political entities, while 75.9% of the content did not relate to programme presentation, and in 16.9% of posts, programmes were presented vaguely, through general promises of improvement. In addition, 9.3% of the content focused on belittling or discrediting political opponents in the elections.
A separate segment of the monitoring focused on identifying political enemies in online campaigning. Political opponents were identified as the main enemy in 159 cases. They were followed by state institutions (16), entity-level institutions (11), another constituent people (9), the media, non-governmental organisations and citizens (5), and the international community and the Office of the High Representative (OHR) (4).
Through its monitoring of online campaigns, Pod lupom identified 212 election irregularities related to: disinformation and information manipulation (94), hate speech (55), misuse of public resources (37), the use of children for political purposes (19), voter pressure (5), and gender-based violence (2).
Pod lupom calls on all political entities to focus their election campaigns on clearly and concretely presenting their programmes, policies and solutions that address issues of genuine importance to citizens, and to conduct their campaigns responsibly and in accordance with the Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Pod lupom Coalition also calls on all citizens to report any observed election irregularities via the toll-free number 080 05 05 05 or through the online reporting form at https://neregularnosti.podlupom.org/, including anonymous reports.
