House of Peoples of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly adopted amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - Delegates of the House of Peoples of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly adopted, without debate, amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code of BiH proposed by delegates from the Club of the Croatian People and delegate Halid Genjac.

These two legislative proposals were adopted by the Constitutional and Legal Commission of the House of Peoples before the session.

This concerns the proposal by delegates from the Club of the Croatian People: Ljilja Zovko, Bariša Čolak, Zdenka Džambas, Mario Karamatić, and Martin Raguž, as well as the principles of the Draft Law on Amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code proposed by delegate Halid Genjac.

As Genjac previously stated, the Constitutional Court issued a decision in June last year challenging very significant provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code of BiH, with an announcement that it could strike them down if the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH did not adopt amendments within six months to ensure compliance of those articles with the BiH Constitution.

Deputy Chair of the House of Peoples, Bariša Čolak, earlier pointed out that the Criminal Procedure Code of BiH must be changed urgently, reminding that at the beginning of December last year, the six-month period in which the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH was supposed to align the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code of BiH with the decision of the Constitutional Court of BiH had expired.

At today's session of the House of Peoples, the amended agenda does not include the European Commission's 2018 Report on BiH. Delegate from the Club of the Serbian People, Sredoje Nović, requested that the Report on the work of the BiH Attorney's Office and the Law on the Agency for Investigation and Protection (SIPA) be removed from the agenda.

This proposal was adopted, and these items were removed from the agenda. Amendments to the Law on Service in the Armed Forces and the Labor Law in the Institutions of BiH were adopted.

Ognjen Tadić and Dragutin Rodić proposed a compromise regarding amendments to the Election Law of BiH.

According to their proposal, amendments related to the introduction of electronic scanning of ballots would be tested from 2020 to examine the system's effectiveness, and if proven efficient, this method of vote counting would be applied in the 2022 General Elections.

However, delegates did not support the amendments to the Election Law concerning the introduction of electronic scanning of ballots.

In the explanation of the Draft Law on Amendments to the Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which provides for the scanning of ballots for the purpose of determining election results, the proponents—Members of the House of Representatives Mirsad Mešić, Damir Bećirović, Saša Magazinović, Mirsad Đonlagić, Fehim Škaljić, Damir Arnaut, and Denis Bećirović—state that manual vote counting, with its questionable credibility and expertise, opens a wide range of manipulations, thereby calling into question the expressed will of voters, the fairness of election results, and thus the elections themselves.

One of the anticipated agenda items is the Information on the implementation of the Plan of Urgent Measures and the realization of activities outlined in the Information on assessments and possibilities of Bosnia and Herzegovina regarding the refugee crisis in the region and the European Union, and an overview of the situation concerning the migrant crisis on the so-called Western Balkan route.