Doubts justified: BiH CEC destroys 2012 watermark

The Central Election Commission of BiH at today's session made a Decision on the destruction of the screen with the watermark kept by the company NEOGRAPH a.s. Prague, Czech Republic. The mentioned screen will be destroyed by a commission within 30 days, with a report and photo documentation, reports the BiH news agency Patria.

This means that the watermark used in the past elections in 2012 will be destroyed before the upcoming General Elections. As Patria previously wrote, doubts have arisen that there could be manipulations with the ballots. Such doubts were raised by MP in the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH Halid Genjac, who pointed out that the only way to protect ballots from abuse is the watermark on the ballot, and that an almost identical watermark exists in the Czech Republic.

CEC spokesperson Maksida Pirić previously confirmed to NAP the existence of the watermark in the Czech Republic, but said that it was nothing unusual, but rather a customary practice to keep the watermark for some time even after the elections. She explicitly claimed that abuse of the old watermark was not possible.

Otherwise, as confirmed, polling stations will be secured by expert observers, and the process of counting votes after the polling stations are closed will also be strictly controlled.