The arrival of the Russian IT experts in the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina is out of the question, said Head of the Bosnian Central Election Commission (CEC) Irena Hadziabdic. She spoke of her visit to Russia amid the memorandum of understanding between the two CECs.

Hadziabdic hopes that the issue with the implementation of the October general election results will be solved by the local politicians.

“I think we spoke about this issue a lot, lately. Unfortunately, we're all aware that we're entering the election period with undefined rules on how to make all the authorities function. I hope that the CEC will put an end to speculation on this issue and that they will focus on the implementation of the election we announced. The burden of lack of rules on implementation of the election result is on the lawmakers,” Hadziabdic said.

She warned that according to international standards, the Election Law must not be changed after the announcement of the election.

“I heard some statements by our politicians, by the Bosnian Presidency members, active members of political parties and certain CEC members and I think they were all correct. The lawmakers can work until the election,” She said. “I suppose the Bosnian Parliamentary Assembly will decrease the level of activities during the election campaign. It would be very bad if sessions would be held during the electoral silence. The international standards prohibit any changes to election rules after the election has been announced.”

However, Hadziabdic adds that without changes to Bosnia's Election Law, the implementation of the October general election results will be impossible. After the election, CEC enters a period of implementation of election results, but She warns that the country could face an agony in the spring when the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina entity is supposed to pass the Budget Law on March 31st, as well as some other important decisions. If this happens, she hopes for the intervention of the High Representative Valentin Inzko, who oversees the implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement which ended the war in Bosnia.

She told N1 that the CEC is working under tremendous political pressure, but that they are not in service of the politics. When asked that the political actors demand from the CEC, Hadziabdic said:

“Any decision made by the CEC favours one or the other political entity. Some are harmed by our decisions and that's why we're under this pressure, but we remained independent. Because our decisions are always doublechecked and because 95 percent of our decisions from the 2014 general election have been confirmed by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and because 90 percent of our decisions for 2016 local election have been confirmed by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, we can say that we continued to work well within the legal norm.”  

Commenting on her visit to the Russian Federation, Hadziabdic confirmed that she visited Russia within the framework of the memorandum of understanding between Bosnia and Russia and that other countries have such memorandums with Russia.

According to her, the Bosnian CEC has similar memorandums with many other countries and during every election in Bosnia and Russia, the two CECs pay exchange visits. Every such memorandum is approved by the Bosnian Presidency.  

Asked to comment on the rumors of the Russian IT experts’ arrival to help the Bosnian CEC with issues from this field, Hadziabdic confirmed that they held talks with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) on the provision of assistance in this field with their own IT experts and the OSCE did provide 2 of their own experts. Under no circumstances would the Russian IT experts be employed by the CEC of Bosnia and Herzegovina, she said.