Prosecutor's Office of BiH will also investigate who is to blame for additional costs due to non-publication of Census results

Another failed meeting of heads of statistical institutions has shown all the irresponsibility of those responsible for publishing the results of the population census conducted in October 2013, writes the BiH news agency Patria.

The greatest responsibility lies with the Agency for Statistics of BiH and its director Velimir Jukić, whose competence, according to Article 20 of the Law on the Census of Population, Households and Dwellings in BiH 2013, is to establish a unique and internationally comparable census methodology, with unique definitions of units and characteristics, unique classifications and content of processing tables according to a unique processing program, unique criteria and logical control programs for detecting and automatically correcting errors in census materials, and for controlling data collected by the census.

According to the same Law, entity statistical institutes participate in the development of the methodology.

However, everything has been returned again to the Council of Ministers of BiH, which had previously called for the urgent adoption of a unique methodology and compliance with the recommendations of the International Monitoring Mission and Eurostat.

Although the Prosecutor's Office of BiH has opened a case regarding the Population Census and the heads of statistical institutions have given their statements as witnesses, the criminal responsibility of those who call into question the nearly 50 million KM spent has still not been determined in detail. The Prosecutor's Office of BiH should also investigate where and how the money of BiH was spent, whether all costs were justified, and who will be held accountable for creating additional costs by delaying the publication of the results.

According to the current Census Law, the results of the population census should be published by July 1 of this year, but it is increasingly likely that this will not happen. The next session of the Central Census Bureau has not even been scheduled, nor is there an end in sight to this agony.

That politics has heavily interfered in the Census is clear from Jukić's proposal, supported by Radmila Čičković, director of the RS Institute of Statistics, to initially delete the nationality, religion, and language for 120,000 enumerated persons, and after last night's session, that number rose to as many as 200,000 census forms for which the status allegedly cannot be determined, i.e., whether the enumerated persons are permanent or non-permanent residents.

If we consider the preliminary results of the Census in Bosnia and Herzegovina, published in November 2013, according to which, out of 3,791,622 enumerated persons, unofficially 1,836,603 persons declared themselves as Bosniaks, 1,239,019 as Serbs, 553,000 as Croats, and 163,000 as Others, then the conclusion clearly emerges that neither the Serbian nor the Croatian political corpus is satisfied with these results, because many things would have to change in the "policy of division" of departments by ethnic key in favor of some, and to the detriment of others or third parties.