Although the general elections for 2026 were announced on May 7, political parties and officials throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina are freely conducting a premature election campaign and abusing public resources without the possibility of sanctions – Transparency International BiH warned today.
As they state in the press release, due to the legal provision that stipulates that the bans apply only to “certified” political entities, the Central Election Commission (CEC) did not impose penalties for obvious violations until the deadline in June.
The rules of conduct during the election period are strictly defined by Chapter 7 of the BiH Election Law, which prohibits premature campaigning, that is, organizing public meetings, distribution of promotional materials, and paid advertising from the day of the announcement to the confirmation of the election results.
“However, Article 1.1a of the same law defines that these prohibitions apply exclusively to political parties, independent candidates and coalitions that have been officially certified for participation. Considering that the deadlines for the certification of parties and independent candidates are only June 6, 2026, and for coalitions June 23, a legal vacuum has been created in which electoral regulations are de facto not applied, and violations cannot be sanctioned,” TI BiH points out.
This gap in the law and the lack of up-to-date institutions, as they add, are already widely used by numerous politicians, so billboards promoting newly formed parties and political movements, such as those of Dr. Vlado Đajić and Draško Stanivuković, who were reported to the Central Election Commission (CEC) by the TI BiH due to a premature campaign, are already widely used throughout the country.
The CEC, however, made a decision according to which these political entities are not subject to sanctions, because they are not officially certified, which, according to the TI BiH, effectively renders the provisions prohibiting premature campaigns meaningless.
TI BiH reminds that they have previously reported Vlado Đajić on several occasions for various forms of running a premature campaign as well as misuse of public resources with the aim of personal promotion. With these moves, as they state, he practically just continued the practice from the period when he was active within the SNSD, using the vagueness of the electoral law to run the promotion smoothly.
“Parallel to that, there are classic examples of abuse of public events and institutions for the purpose of personal promotion of officials in a period when this is not allowed. Thus, the SNSD municipal committee in Foča pointed out on its official Facebook page that ‘Foča Municipality is the sponsor of the graduation evening’, along with photos and a text in which Mayor Milan Vukadinović and President of the Assembly Nikola Vasiljević, both from that party, welcome the graduates, appropriating the public event for their own promotion,” according to TI BiH.
A similar practice, they say, takes place unhindered in the online space, where the rules are openly violated by paid advertising, which is best demonstrated by Mirnes Ajanović, a councilor in the Tuzla City Council and the president of the BOSS party, who, regardless of the legal bans on premature campaigns, continuously publishes and promotes paid ads on the Facebook platform, many of which are marked as political advertising even by this company.
“Although such moves represent a drastic violation of the rules of conduct in the pre-election period, for which a penalty of 3 to 30 thousand BAM is foreseen for parties and coalitions, or 3 to 15 thousand BAM for candidates, they remain unsanctioned because political entities have not yet been officially certified by the CEC. In order to suppress similar phenomena and strengthen the integrity of the election process, Transparency International in BiH is starting a process of comprehensive monitoring of pre-election activities of political entities, candidates, but also government institutions, public officials and public institutions, companies and their managers,” said TI BiH.
They add that monitoring includes field observation of events, monitoring of media and online space, but also public spending in the period from the announcement of the election, and all observed irregularities will be documented and reported to the competent institutions for action, in an effort to adequately address and sanction each violation.
That is why TI BiH calls on all participants in the electoral process, including political parties, candidates, public institutions and officials, to adhere to the rules and legal provisions in order for the elections to be held in a fair and honest atmosphere with as few abuses and examples that reduce citizens’ trust in the electoral process itself, TI BiH announced.
