Vehid Sehic, a former member of the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CIK BiH), explained to N1 that the Election Law that was in effect on the day of the announcement of the local elections will be applied.

He said that any changes from any legislative body in BiH will not be applied, nor can they be applied in October.

“This is the law and the rule,” said Sehic.

Regarding the credibility of the election process, he recalled that after the General Elections of 2006, on that day, the High Representative issued a decision on the composition of the House of the Federation, allowing the formation of the FBiH Government, the Council of Ministers, and the House of Peoples of the State Parliament.

“Already then, the legitimacy of the High Representative was recognized. That's unquestionable, and his decisions became part of the election process. These are technical changes, while the core has remained unchanged. Anyone who values the rule of law will inevitably have to accept what's currently written in the Election Law of BiH,” he said.

Introducing new technologies

Sehic considers the most significant innovation in the election process to be the introduction of new technologies in ten municipalities and 150 polling stations.

“We'll see how this works. It's not a particularly significant change that the CIK BiH will henceforth appoint the presidents and vice presidents of the electoral committees as non-partisan individuals in BiH. I've always been skeptical about this. We've witnessed that you can be a non-partisan individual, perform specific roles, and then resign, only to be appointed the next day as the president or vice president of the election committee,” Sehic noted.

CIK BiH will do everything to find non-partisan candidates, he adds, but he also points out that “when you live in a country where moral values in politics have disappeared, where people move from party to party, and independent councilors become partisan, there’s still a lot of electoral trading in BiH. However, this is a good start.”

Sehic concluded that there’s an effort to partially restore morality to the electoral process, as candidates convicted of war crimes are banned from running for office, which is very important to remove such individuals from political life.