Representatives of the observer mission of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly assessed that the General Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina are proceeding peacefully for now and without significant difficulties, stressing that the final findings on the electoral process will be presented after reports from the field have been collected.
The OSCE Special Coordinator for the General Elections in BiH and the head of the short-term observation mission, Luis Graça, stated in Sarajevo that the main goal of the international observers is to assess the extent to which democratic standards and obligations undertaken within the framework of the OSCE are respected.
“We are very proud to be here to express solidarity with the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We care about democratic standards in the OSCE and we try to see if the promises made are actually fulfilled. We are also observing whether there is any pressure on the voters,” said Graça.
He reminded that the OSCE and ODIHR mission is not only focused on the election day, but also on the entire pre-election process.
“OSCE and ODIHR have had their teams present here since August. It is not only about what is happening today, but also about the period before the elections, that is, whether all political parties had equal opportunities during the campaign,” added Graça.
Speaking about the differences compared to the elections held four years ago, the head of mission of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, member of the Belgian Parliament Allessia Claes, emphasized the introduction of new technologies in the election process.
“What we see today are new technologies such as ballot scanning and voter authentication. Those machines are used for voters to express their electoral will,” said Claes.
Speaking about the observations so far, Graça stated that preliminary impressions indicate an orderly flow of voting.
“It seems that everything is going without major problems, but we have about 100 members of the delegation who are observing the election process in approximately 400 locations today. They talk to the participants of the process and collect information, so we will wait until the end of the day to have a complete picture,” said Graça.
He added that new technologies can contribute to greater transparency of the election process.
“This is the 12th time we have observed the elections in BiH, and transparency has always been one of the most important things for us,” he emphasized.
Claes added that it is a broad international observation operation involving several organizations.
“This observation mission is not only a mission of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. We also cooperate with the parliamentary assemblies of NATO and the Council of Europe, so today we have more than 400 observers spread across the country,” Claes pointed out.
She stressed that it is too early to make any conclusions about the quality of the election process.
“We have to see what will happen throughout the day and we can’t draw conclusions yet. Tomorrow afternoon we will hold a press conference where we will present the first findings of the observation mission,” said Claes, Fena writes.
