The key question for any normal citizen, viewed from the standpoint of invalid ballots, is how it is possible that 60,000 ballots were also invalid for the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bajtal says.
After General Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina, political parties and projections of won mandates create combination for forming a government. SDA and HDZ won the largest number of mandates in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, while SNSD proved the most successful in Republika Srpska. As Raport previously reported, a meeting between the leaders of SDA and HDZ BiH, Bakir Izetbegović and Dragan Čović, is expected the next week.
According to preliminary data of the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina, there were more than 386,000 invalid ballots in the elections held on October 4.
Impoverishment of the Population
Sociologist Esad Bajtal commented for Raport on the elections, the new technologies, and particularly a large number of invalid ballots. He said he is not surprised by the results.
“I don’t know if the citizens are. We are aware of the fact that for two or three cycles already, SNSD and HDZ have been running away from electronic verification and control of the election process, we all remember this. In the meantime, nine-ten years later, they agreed. This tells me, from the standpoint of the obtained results, that they have finally succeeded in finding a way to cheat that system too. This means that CEC’s figure shows that there are about 400,000 invalid ballots out of about 1,415,000 voters, not turnout. This tells us that we have been deceived again, that we have been robbed regardless of the electronic system. The key question for any normal citizen, if we are looking at it from the standpoint of invalid ballots, is how it is possible there are also 60,000 invalid ballots for the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Bajtal said.
According to our interviewee, whether the CEC and international community will recognize these elections is the crucial question.
“This is such brutal theft. Invalid ballots are not an accident, are 400,000 that dump that they do not know how to fill out a ballot? That we have 400,000 fools, this is what the authorities, our ethno-authorities above all, tell us. Therefore, the governments which swear by the citizens while cramming them into their ethnic pens, into their Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks. They tell their Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks ‘you are fools, and we do what we want.’ They will continue to do everything they had done. Why are elections stolen? Because if they lose them, assuming that a normal government comes to power that will adhere to norms, rights, legal institutions, obligations, and democratic principles, they would have to give an account for everything that was not done, although it was promised, what was done wrongly and badly. What was done wrongly and badly? Plunder, deceit, the impoverishment of the population, ruined healthcare, educational, and overall economic and business life, everything is destroyed. That is why they should be held accountable, why elections cannot be lost, and why they will continue following the same principle. They will continue to steal, cheat, raise tensions of a potential war and conflict, nothing new will happen, unfortunately,” Bajtal said.
However, compared to the previous elections when electoral engineering and vote manipulation were largely emphasized, this time that is not the case to such an extent. Bajtal said he can’t explain how come political parties did not complain.
“Fraud Becomes a Normal Thing”
“How can they explain 400,000 invalid ballots and claim it is not an issue. To have 40,000 invalid ballots is too much. How come that nobody has a problem with it, neither the parties that lost, nor the CEC, nor the international community. Maybe it is not a problem for them. We citizens must ask them how this is not a problem for you. Is it possible that there are 400,000 invalid ballots? Take a look the vote difference among the Presidency members and take into account the 60,000 invalid ballots. The ranking could have been completely different, this is not a statistical error; that is the production of results, that is electoral engineering, those are manufactured results tailored to their own needs, to stay in the position where people don’t want you. And who says the people don’t want them? They don’t, because 60% of people did not want to go to the polls because they know, whether they went or not, whatever was going to happen would happen. Elementary logic tells us that it is about fraud, and the question how it is possible that you see this fraud as normal, well because you have cheated in the exact same way for decades, fraud has become normal, fraud has become normal, engineering has become normal. It doesn’t matter what I am stating, this is just my voice, but the figures speak, logic speaks, and the state of affairs speaks through me,” concluded Bajtal for Raport.
