While changes to the Electoral Law are being talked about again and again, the elections are just around the corner. The campaign is on the threshold. Although, it is true, it has already started, the official, paid one – only starts on the second of September. Already on that day, posters, billboards, videos and jingles will occupy every part of the public and media space. As in every election cycle, parties spend millions of marks on this type of advertising, and most of it is paid for by citizens.
In just over 16 years, political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as of last year, received about 336 million marks from the budgets of different levels of government. According to data from the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina, budget financing represents up to 80 percent of the income of a political party. However, the funds used in campaigns are many times higher, warn from the non-governmental sector.
“What all our research shows is that parties have much more assets than they show in their reports. In their reports, they show revenues from the budget, while donations from private companies show less and less,” says Srdan Traljic, PR of Transparency International BiH.
Traljic adds that, although there have been various initiatives to reduce or cancel the budgetary funding of the parties, the fact is that these funds are the least controversial in the business of the parties. The question is how justified it is for citizens to finance the work of parties and who controls how these funds are spent.
“The CEC of BiH does not have adequate insight and does not have adequate resources, the law did not allow them to do so, let’s be clear, and perhaps not even the internal resources, to control the spending of their money properly. To be completely honest – I believe that parties should not be financed from the budget”, says political analyst Stefan Blagic.
Representatives of political parties believe that the eventual abolition of this type of financing would be disastrous for democratic processes, as it would harm smaller and opposition political parties the most.
“Probably, the parties in power would find suitable alternatives, but primarily the burden of such a solution would be borne by the opposition parties. Perhaps I would rather say that the image of those parties has been created in the public, that the problem is not in those means, but the problem is evidently in the lack of results and greater progress when it comes to the life of citizens in the entities and in the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina”, points out Zoran Latinovic, Secretary General of the SDS- a.
One of the technical changes to the Election Law, imposed by Christian Schmidt, concerns the reduction of abuse of public funds. The Central Electoral Commission of BiH faced a new challenge.
“What are they doing? He goes in a convoy of official vehicles, he uses an official vehicle, at 10 o’clock in the morning he is at a state rally for which he is responsible, and then at 2 or 5 p.m. he goes to a party rally. You can’t forbid him to do that,” says Suad Arnautovic, president of the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as an example.
Arnautovic notes that the CEC of BiH has already taken certain steps, in accordance with the amendments to the law, to reduce the misuse of public funds. In what way, the public does not yet know.
