OSCE: Election boycotts are not in the best interest of a healthy democracy

(Patria) - The OSCE Mission today commented on the election boycott in Srebrenica announced by the Initiative "My Address: Srebrenica".

“Voting is a fundamental democratic right, which citizens may exercise or not. Election boycotts are not in the best interest of a healthy democracy,” the OSCE commented.

They stated that the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina continues to support the efforts of the Central Election Commission of BiH to improve the BiH electoral system, and called on all to respect their decisions.

The CEC made a decision to annul the election results for 26 out of 28 polling stations for Srebrenica, as well as 89 out of a total of 108 polling stations in Doboj, because voting was allowed at these polling stations for persons without valid BiH documents. At the same time, graphologists identified numerous irregularities in voters' signatures.

In the repeated elections in Doboj and Srebrenica, as confirmed by the CEC, the same candidate lists and the same extracts from the Central Voters' Register as of November 15 will be used. The largest number of votes in Srebrenica and Doboj in the elections to be repeated were won by the current municipal mayors, Mladen Grujičić and Boris Jerinić, both from the SNSD.