Voters allowed to choose whom they want, but parties will actually decide who it really will be!

The Interdepartmental Working Group on the Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina has not accomplished much concrete work, although they often meet, and a kind of deception is on the horizon, warn experts, writes the news agency Patria.

Lazar Prodanović, a member of the Interdepartmental Working Group, said after yesterday's session that although “there were no changes in the system of semi-open candidate lists within which a voter can vote for both a political party and a candidate or several of them within a single list, it was decided to increase the threshold for winning mandates related to personal votes achieved through preferences from the previous five to as much as 30 percent”.

- There was agreement within the Interdepartmental Working Group to increase it to 30 percent, although I think we will be in a situation to reconsider this. This could be applicable when it comes to parliamentary elections given the high percentage of personal votes, but when it comes to local elections, I fear that such a situation in many local communities would mean that the lists would not be significantly changed. Instead of being open as before, with the application of the new system they would more closely resemble closed lists because it is unlikely that in some local communities candidates will win 30 percent of personal votes – said Prodanović.

However, Almir Terzić, an analyst and a good connoisseur of the Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina, warned in a statement for the news agency Patria that this is a deception of voters.

- The Interdepartmental Working Group for amendments to the Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina, under the guise of increasing the electoral threshold within candidate lists from 5 to as much as 30 percent, has de facto carried out a silent coup and closed the candidate lists in another way. Namely, it is almost impossible for a candidate for whom a voter votes using the preference system, personally by name and surname, to be able to win a mandate in parliaments and assemblies.

Because there are few candidates on the lists of political parties who will be able to secure 30 percent of the votes within the list to win a mandate. Due to this impossibility, the lists determined by the parties by serial number will be applied, on the basis of which mandates will be allocated. Therefore, whether you vote for the desired candidate or not, those appointed by the parties will sit in parliaments and assemblies. It would be more honest if they had closed the candidate lists, rather than in this way leaving voters the possibility to choose whom they want, while the parties will actually decide who it will really be – emphasizes Terzić.