In the past two months, Transparency International Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) observers recorded over 1.300 examples of the use of public resources for the promotion of political parties and candidates and a significant increase in public spending in the pre-election period.
36 reports were sent to the Central Election Commission (CEC) due to premature campaigning, violation of the Law on Financing Political Parties, and abuse of public resources, which, unfortunately, is not adequately regulated even by the latest amendments to the Election Law imposed by the Office of the High Representative (OHR). Thus, the CEC rejected the first reports of TI BIH, because the ban on abuse of public resources only applies to the period of the official election campaign that starts on September 2nd, so everything that happened in the past period will go unpunished.
Although the pre-election campaign lasts 30 days, political parties have long since started holding open pre-election gatherings, the largest number of which was held by the SDA. A large number of them were attended by employees of public institutions and even police officers.
In the past period, a large number of examples of abuse of events organized by public institutions for the promotion of parties and candidates have been recorded, but unfortunately, this phenomenon is prohibited by law only during the official election campaign. TI BIH observers accompanied 350 public events organized by institutions, and 67 percent were attended by candidates in the elections.
Unfortunately, unlike neighboring countries, BiH did not introduce a limit on public spending in the pre-election period, which is also this year a key resource that is being misused for buying votes and promoting candidates. That is why TI BIH has published an online map of pre-election works whose beginning or end has been promoted in the past two months. The data show that since the first of July, 249 works worth 845 million BAM have started in BiH, 227 works worth 175 million BAM were completed, and the total value of public works in these two months already exceeded the annual value of all works, which, according to the data of the Public Procurement Agency of BiH, were contracted all last year. An additional practice that has been introduced is the presentation of construction plans for infrastructure facilities, for which procedures have not yet been initiated, and in the previous two months, the value of such promised projects is over 500 million BAM.
TI BiH points out that all these examples, as well as the significant increase in public spending in the pre-election period, show that the conditions for fair and honest elections have not been created in BiH, because candidates and parties with public resources have a significant advantage. Even after the official start of the election campaign, TI BiH will continue to monitor the activities of officials, parties, and candidates, focusing especially on violations of the rules of conduct in the campaign, misuse of public resources, pressure on voters, and other phenomena, and will also monitor the campaign costs of individual parties, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
