According to the Corruption Perceptions Index survey, Bosnia and Herzegovina ranks lowest in the region and third worst in Europe. Political corruption, trade in mandates, positions, electoral committees is gaining more and more momentum. While the ruling coalition at the BiH level focused on changes to the Electoral Law on changing the composition of the Central Election Commission, the first man of the Central Election Commision *(CEC) proposes to close the electoral lists, so that the ballot has only the name and logo of the party. Do closed lists solve the problem of political corruption in BiH?
The President of the CEC proposes to introduce mandatory voting and sanctions for abstainers in the amendments to the BiH Election Law. The ballot, in his opinion, should be printed at the polling station using licensed software and scanned after voting. Voters who vote outside BiH are suggested to register via a video link.
“Let the mandate belong to the party, not to an individual. When the elected mandate holder leaves the party or is expelled from the party and the parliamentary club, the mandate should remain with the party and be assigned to the next candidate on the list of the political party”, says the president of SIP BiH Suad Arnautović.
In “Transparency International” they are against closing the electoral rolls. They believe that this would not solve the problem of trading mandates, and would reduce democracy.
“Closed lists would make it impossible for citizens to select candidates within the parties to give priority to those they think would represent them best. On the other hand, they would get a situation where party leaders have unlimited power and control”, explains Srđan Traljić from Transparency International BiH.
Even for journalist Rubina Čengić, closed election lists are not the solution. Legal measures and penalties for manipulation of election results should be tightened, she says.
“The mandate holder is a representative and it shouldn’t be a problem if he changes the political party he was in.” “Manipulations in the counting of votes and manipulations in voter lists are a much bigger problem,” Čengić points out.
In BiH, there is no will to solve the issue of political corruption, because it suits both the ruling and opposition parties, says analyst Mladen Bubonjić.
“Obviously, the political elites, especially those in power, do not have the will, the will, the desire, nor do they show the intention to do it not only on the suggestions, but also on the implicit pressures of the international community,” says political analyst Mladen Bubonjić.
In the last convocation of the National Assembly of the Republika Srpska, as many as one third of the deputies changed their party jersey and transferred the mandate won in one party to another party.
Since 2018, more than a hundred transitions from one political option to another have been recorded in the Republika Srpska. In the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, some politicians changed their party five times.
Our interlocutors believe that the issue of trafficking in election committees and irregularities during voting and counting of ballots must first be resolved, and voters, they say, will punish “flyers” on
next elections.
