CEC BiH Imposes Heavy Fines on SNSD, SDS, and DEMOS

(Patria) - The Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina today announced new fines for political parties. This time, they are significantly higher than previously imposed, with SNSD fined 12,000 KM, DEMOS 10,000 KM, and SDS 8,000 KM.

The decision was made at today's 55th emergency session, where the fines for the mentioned parties were also announced.

As explained, the parties were fined because they repeated the offense and had previously ignored the issued provisions to remove controversial posts for which they had been fined earlier.

Regarding the DEMOS party, a complaint against them was submitted by the Center for Civil Initiatives (CCI), concerning posts on Facebook.

“In their complaint, CCI stated that DEMOS conducted a premature election campaign on Facebook by publishing the text ‘promised-fulfilled’. They mentioned two individuals who published it – Viktor Čubrilović and Svetlana Ignjić. Upon reviewing their statements published on the DEMOS page, it was determined that these were pre-election messages and a premature election campaign, and the service's proposal is to fine the mentioned party. Given that this party has not reacted to previous sanctions and has not removed the two previous posts related to the premature campaign, the service holds them responsible on this matter and therefore they are fined 10,000 KM, and DEMOS is simultaneously ordered to remove these specific posts the day after the decision becomes legally binding,” they stated, adding that this party has been fined three times in this cycle and this is their fourth offense of the same kind.

“This was taken into account when imposing the monetary sanction. Every decision on a monetary fine contained a provision to remove the content, and in two out of three cases, this was not done. Fines were previously imposed at the minimum monetary amount, however, unfortunately, in almost half of those cases, the fined parties did not remove the posts for which the sanction was imposed. We hope that this rather large fine will now yield results,” said Vanja Bjelica Prutina, a member of the CEC.

In addition to that sanction, the CEC also issued one for SDS. It was stated that the fine for this sanction was imposed because the municipal board in Kotor Varoš published the names of candidates and affirmative texts about them on Facebook.

The complaint was filed by Transparency International.

“The service determined that in the case in question, it is indeed a premature campaign and that it must be sanctioned for that reason. Given that neither SDS nor DEMOS removed the controversial posts, they were fined 8,000 KM, and simultaneously, this party in Kotor Varoš is ordered to remove the controversial post from July 1st of this year, the day after this decision becomes legally binding,” the CEC added.

The session also discussed the fine for SNSD, where it was determined that the municipal board of this party in Vlasenica also conducted a premature campaign.

In addition, it was stated that SNSD had already been fined four times, and they had ignored the order to remove controversial posts three times.

“In this case, the CEC acted on a complaint via e-mail. Therefore, proceedings were initiated ex officio against SNSD, municipal board Vlasenica. This concerns a premature election campaign, and considering that SNSD had been previously fined and had not acted in accordance with the orders, the proposal is to declare this party responsible and fine them 12,000 KM, and to order them to remove the controversial posts the day after the decision becomes legally binding,” it was stated at the CEC session.

All these decisions were made unanimously, reports N1.