The Head of the OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission, Ms Corien Jonker, and her team briefed the Ambassadors of EU Member States resident in Bosnia and Herzegovina at a meeting on Tuesday 16 September. ODIHR/OSCE is in country until 23 October with 11 core team members, 20 Long-Term Observers (LTOs) and will field 300 Short Term Observers (STOs). The Mission will be looking at a wide range of areas of election practice including but not limited to transparency and impartiality of the Central and Municipal Election Commissions, capacity of polling stations, harmonisation of election legislation at state and entity level, party financing legislation, handling of complaints, implementation of previous ODIHR recommendations, campaigning and respect for minority rights.
The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and CoE Parliamentary Assembly are also expected to send observers for the general elections in BiH.
The meeting also welcomed the Director of the domestic observation coalition ‘Pod lupom’ (Under the magnifying glass), Mr Dario Jovanovic. He informed the Ambassadors that ‘Pod Lupom’ is carrying out an unprecedented operation in BiH with approximately 3,300 domestic observers to be on the ground on election-day. This Coalition, composed of seven NGOs, is supported among others by the EU, the US, UK, the Netherlands and Norway. It is currently looking at the campaigning period, including a media monitoring component, and will issue findings on and immediately after election day (12 October), and later will issue recommendations.
The observation efforts were welcomed as valuable support to fair and transparent elections in BiH.
