Most Irregular Elections in BiH So Far: Thefts, Framings, Frauds and Fights

Elections as the strongest fact of democracy, this time in BiH have completely failed. There are dozens of examples of the degradation of this process through attempts at electoral engineering and brutal fraud, writes the Patria news agency.  

The fact that the people of Mostar did not have elections for the second time in a row was enough to degrade this electoral process. Of course, if you want to destroy something, say it depends on a political agreement. The fact that Mostar is abstaining is, unfortunately, very casually accepted by people from the so-called international community.

Of course, the status quo only suits the HDZ. Any casualness by the SDA only helps the HDZ in tearing this city away from this state and its people.

An almost identical criminal scenario was prepared for Stolac as well. Voting will not take place because the people rushed into democracy and wanted to defend it by all means. The Initiative for Stolac and the Stolac HDZ 1990 accused the HDZ of trying to insert the votes of the dead into the legal electoral process.

The moves of the President of the Stolac Electoral Board, Ivan Perić, have evidently cast doubt on the democratic electoral process. Dividing single-ethnic shifts within a state institution during the electoral process itself is a farce.

At the same time, Perić evidently violated electoral rules, allowing voting with fake documents, passports of the Republic of Croatia, or without any documents at all.   

It looked terrible when one of the members of the BiH Central Election Commission said that Perić was attacked, his glasses were broken, and he was admitted to the hospital with serious bodily injuries. Two days later, no injuries, let alone “serious bodily injuries,” were visible on Perić’s face, and he still had glasses with an identical frame on his head.

At yesterday’s press conference, the new Mayor of Zenica, Fuad Kasumović, again demanded an investigation by the police into the attempted bribery of a polling board member and the offering of money. Kasumović says this after a brilliant election victory against powerful party machines.

Namely, at one polling station, a member of the polling board was offered 1,500 KM to leave the polling station immediately after 7:00 PM. He took the money and reported everything to the police.

From election to election, there is already talk of prepared bags of votes that are literally inserted into polling stations. In BiH, the voting sentence applies: It is not those who vote who win, but those who count the votes. From the first post-war elections until today, 21 years later, no one has yet found a model to prevent any electoral fraud.  

Four bags of ballots were found in Soukbunar, on the outskirts of the Sarajevo municipality of Centar. Immediately after that, the bags were handed over to the Prosecutor’s Office. A shocking outcome followed: The Prosecutor’s Office determined that there was no criminal offense and handed the bags over to the CEC for counting.

It is complete madness to legitimize bags found on the street as legal and include them in the electoral process.

In Srebrenica, a new count of ballots was requested after significant discrepancies in the announcement of votes were discovered. A similar request was made in Bijeljina, where since the end of the elections, polemics have been ongoing between two candidates, Mićo Mićić, who declared victory, and Zlatko Maksimović, who filed a complaint. 

HDZ 1990 complained about electoral theft in Livno. Ilija Cvitanović, the party leader, publicly accused the HDZ.

- A brutal electoral theft occurred in Livno. More than a thousand votes were stolen.

Cvitanović called for an investigation of the electoral process in Livno by the prosecutor’s office, courts, and the Central Election Commission of BiH.

These are just a few well-founded suspicions about the electoral process. Everyone agrees that these were the most irregular elections so far. The question is how many electoral robberies remained unknown and in the dark. It is necessary to amend the Election Law of BiH and definitively protect the electoral process from manipulation and theft.