BS
The Coalition for Free and Fair Elections “Pod lupom” reported the “Draško Stanivuković – Pokret Sigurna Srpska” Coalition for a premature campaign in early September.
In late August, a video was published on the official Facebook profile of Draško Stanivuković and the political entity Secure Srpska Movement, showing a neglected and devastated cultural center in Sokolac. In the video, Stanivuković claims that the facility is in such a state due to “the negligence of the current authorities who have not invested funds in its renovation, but instead directed funds toward other things.”
“This government has managed to destroy our culture, and that is how a nation is destroyed. The message from here must be clear: we must not allow any municipality, even the smallest one, and especially a city like Doboj, to spend another year in the future without having a center for culture, art, and literature, and everything that makes a city a city and a nation a nation, which is culture. These things are an imperative for us and we must work on them every day from today on,” Stanivuković says in the video.
The Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina defines a premature campaign as “any form of campaign activities undertaken by political entities in the period from the calling of elections until the official start of the election campaign.”
The applicant believes that by highlighting what is important for this political entity in the future, while pointing out where the current authorities failed to act, political messages are being sent with the aim of winning the trust of voters, which is prohibited before the official start of the election campaign.
The Central Election Commission decided that the aforementioned content constitutes a premature campaign. The CEC imposed a fine of 8,500 BAM on the “Draško Stanivuković – Secure Srpska Movement” Coalition, and a fine of 5,000 BAM on candidate Draško Stanivuković. When deciding on the amount of the fine, the CEC took into account the fact that the coalition had already been fined ten times for a premature campaign, and candidate Stanivuković four times for the same irregularity.
