prijava
SARAJEVO, September 29 (FENA) - In the past three months, Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) recorded over two thousand examples of the use of public funds for election promotion and the Central Election Commission (CEC) received the first reports about this issue, which is prohibited by the latest amendments to the BiH Election Law.
According to Korajlić, TI BiH has sent 70 reports to the Central Election Commission, 16 of which refer to misuse of public resources regulated by newly imposed provisions of the Election Law, which apply only during the official election campaign.
She explained that the reports mostly refer to abuses of public institution events where some candidates campaigned. This phenomenon is widespread and it is shown by the fact that candidates in the elections attended 76 percent of the 532 monitored public events.
She also emphasized that cases of the use of public company equipment in the campaign were reported to the CEC.
TI BiH spokesman Srđan Traljić said that what TI BiH considers to be the biggest form of abuse of public resources, which refers to the increase in public spending before the elections, is still not punishable by the Election Law.
“In the past three months, 278 million KM were distributed through one-time payment assistance to different categories of the population, according to TI BiH data and we single out the assistance of the FBIH Government at the end of the campaign of 100 KM to all unemployed workers, one-time payment assistance in the amount of 800 KM to all employees of the FBIH Railways, as well as two new tranches of 100 KM each to all war veterans and young people in the Republika Srpska. The SNSD president even directly admitted at one of the pre-election rallies that this money was given for the sake of the election, which was also reported to the Central Election Commission in the context of misuse of public resources for election purposes,” said Traljić.
He emphasized that TI BiH also published a map of pre-election works, which shows that in the past three months, 334 cases of opening completed public works before the elections were recorded, the value of which is about 266 million KM.
”In the same period, we registered 345 works that have been started and are worth KM 1.1 billion, of which over KM 900 million refer to two sections of highway that announced the start of construction just before the elections,” he stated.
TI BiH also published the results of the monitoring of election campaign expenses, which show that political parties spent about 9.6 million KM in the first three weeks of the campaign.
“This amount was spent on billboards, advertisements in the media, television and print media, Facebook advertising, and pre-election rallies, and by far the largest amounts were spent by SNSD - 1.6 million KM and SDA - 1.5 million KM, followed by PDP and SDP who have spent 600 thousand KM each on the campaign so far,” says Traljić.
IT BiH points out that these amounts are not final because the costs of advertising and pre-election rallies in the last week of the election campaign, as well as other forms of advertising that IT BiH did not monitor, are not included, but that it can already be said that this is one of the most expensive election campaigns in Bosnia and Herzegovina because according to CEC data, the parties have never reported larger amounts.
(FENA) A. B.
