In an interview for FACE TV, President of the Strategic Committee of the Coalition ”Pod lupom” Vehid Sehic warned of electoral manipulation that question the free will of voters.
How much is electoral system in BiH really free?
Legal and constitutional requirements allow free elections, and the citizens freely participate in the elections, to express their will. In most cases, people do, but when it comes to the fact that it should determine the results, then we have a specific manipulation, which jeopardize the freely expressed will of the people who use their active suffrage. We have witnessed many manipulation at the polling station, the electoral will of forgery, which leads again to question the very legitimacy of the electoral process, in particular the election results.
What should change?
In the first place it should establish responsibility through all the elections, the CEC carried out now, so from 2002 onwards, it was observed that one of the major problems in respect of law and implementing regulations issued by the Election Commission just electoral committees who do not meet all those guidelines and procedures that must be followed. For the simple reason that the members of polling stations are representatives of political parties, or members of political parties, initially was thought to be members of the polling stations who are from different political parties to control each other’s best, but the best intentions to show that they were not justified.
The answer is clear, that certain instructions are given by political parties, until they punish those who are not only the direct perpetrators but those who gave the orders, we will have difficult job to eradicate this kind of corruption in elections in BiH.
How we van prevent the theft of votes, as do other countries are doing?
Everywhere you have these kinds of problems, but we must take account, that our election system is very complex and certainly in this current situation needs to improve. A lot of time is lost on the fact that classified ballots after the completion of the election. We have several levels of elections, one of the proposals of the Coalition – Pod lupom is that for every electoral level we have to have a special ballot box and upbringing will be transparent, visible means to insert the ballot, to avoid manipulations. To some technical improvements to the I see no reason not to be accepted in these following amendments to the Election Law.
Can we make a comparision, the last elections and this is the past or a few years ago. Is the situation at least a little bit better? At least when it comes to stealing votes and the rest?
Theft of votes has always been, now that we are talking about a public order on election day, certainly those problems doesn’t exist as it was in previous years. I must say that today we have the pressures of commissioners, for voters who to vote for. I really think until this state is not rule of law, and until a criminal suit someone who suggests or makes someone outside their will, to vote for the political party or candidate, without liability, absolutely there is no democracy. Each of West European country is its democracy built on the punishment of all those who do not respect the Constitution and laws, which were passed in a democratic atmosphere. Try to Germany, Switzerland do something outside the law, you will be sanctioned, absolutely.
Source: Pod Lupom
