Annual press conference of the BiH Central Election Commission
Sarajevo, 13 December 2017 – The BiH Central Election Commission has held today the annual press conference. Dr. Irena Hadžiabdić, president of the BiH CEC talked about the activities of the BiH CEC in 2017 and the plans for 2018.
Dr. Hadžiabdić expressed the satisfaction with the fact that this year was very successful for the BiH CEC although it was a non-election year, it was full of other significant activities.
Dr. Hadžiabdić said that the BiH CEC had in this year conducted indirect elections for the City Council of the City of Sarajevo and the Assembly of the City of East Sarajevo, repeated elections for the mayor and municipal council of Stolac, early elections for the mayor of Trnovo municipality and on 17 December, 2017 it will conduct early elections for the mayor of Glamoč municipality. She said that continuous efforts were put in completing the municipal/city election commission, in sanctioning members of the polling station committees for established irregularities at the polling stations during the 2016 Local Elections as well as in awarding substitute mandates in the bodies of authority in BiH.
Numerous activities for establishment of the BiH CEC Center for Education were conducted and it was opened on October 9, 2017.
With the financial assistance of the Council of Europe the BiH CEC implemented 5 projects in 2017:
1. Conference “2016 Local Elections- lessons learned”, February 2017,
2. Additional training of trainers of presidents and members of PSCs,
3. Preparation and publishing of the brochure on “New technologies in electoral process- challenges and possibilities of application in BiH” and engagement of the expert Peter Wolf who worked with the Inter-departmental working group to analyze and propose modalities for introduction of new technologies into the electoral process,
4. “Collection of papers” on topics that emanated from the Conference “2016 Local Elections- lessons learned”,
5. Curriculum for the Center for Education and LEAD course for the BIH CEC members and managerial staff of the BiH CEC Secretariat whereafter we got 8 certified LEAD facilitators, who delivered LEAD training to 50 presidents of the municipal/city election commissions in Sarajevo and Laktaši.
The total value of the projects is 120.000 Euro.
President of the BiH CEC Dr. Irena Hadžiabdić said that Asset declaration forms of elected officials are again available on the web site of the BiH Cec as of today. The BiH CEC has developed a new application for entry of the data from the asset declaration forms, excluding the protected personal information. The application is adapted to the official languages in BiH, and the data on assets of officials elected at the 2014 General Elections were entered and the application was tested. Asset declaration forms of 516 current office holders are today available on the website of the BIH CEC. There are 518 mandates, but two substitute mandates are to be awarded.
Entering the data from the Asset declaration forms for 141 elected municipal/city mayors will be done in the forthcoming period. Publication of these data can be expected in March 2018 and it will be followed by entry of the data for 3140 newly elected councilors at the 2016 Local Elections.