Gaining election points through abuse of public resources

Banja Luka, September 1, 2010— Transparency International Bosnia and Herzegovina (TI BiH) strongly disapproves of increasing tendency of abusing public resources for the purpose of election campaign and appeals to political parties not to act irresponsible towards the funds that came from taxpayers, whose interests they should represent. Impelled by recent campaign of Elektroprivreda BiH and Federal Ministry of Energy, Mining and Industry, under the slogan „Nije kasno za bolji život“(„Not late for a better life“), which was obviously used for pre-electoral purposes, TI BiH sent to Elektroprivreda BiH request for information about public tender for conduction of the campaign, along with the criteria for the assessment, the best bidder and the price of agreed services.

Elektroprivreda replied that this company did not take part in organizing the campaign and therefore did not finance it, remarking that information can be gained from the Ministry of Energy, Mining and Industry. TI BiH contacted the Ministry in order to get abovementioned information, but Ministry refused to reveal any, although the legal limit for providing the information has expired.

Considering the fact that Elektroprivreda, whose name has been used in the campaign is not familiar with any details of the campaign, along with the statement of Federal Prime Minister, Mustafa Mujezinovic that the campaign was not financed from the federal budget and that the Government did not give its consent, conclusion is that in this case, public resources are being abused for the promotion of the political party, Stranka za BiH, whose member is Minister of energy, mining and industry, Vahid Heco. Although TI BiH was denied of the information, it will use all the legal remedies to get the insight into contract for campaign implementation, in order to inform the citizens completely about the way their money is being spent.

Financing pre-electoral campaigns from the state budget is not only problem in Federation of BiH– after re-broadcasting the movie “Ponosni na Srpsku” (“Proud of Srpska”) signed by Republic of Srpska Government, which promotes the achievements of political party SNSD just before the beginning of the election campaign, it became clear that the main purpose of this movie is glorification of Milorad Dodik, president of SNSD, who is a candidate for president of RS in upcoming elections. Naturally, funds for this movie, which was broadcasted in prime-time on almost all the TV-stations in RS, were provided from the RS budget, i.e. taxpayers’ money.

Irresponsibility towards the public resources has also been shown by the political party SDA, that paid auxiliary workers through the service cooperative Peskara, which is not only unregistered, but according to findings of Centar za instrazivacko novinarstvo (The Center for Investigative Reporting), several persons listed as workers never really had cooperation with SDA. Also, significant part of abovementioned resources never made its way to final users. TI BiH has already warned about the fact that nither Central Election Comission (CEC) nor other institutions have jurisdiction of control over the political parties’ expenditures, which enables parties to spend budget resources in an illegal way, just like SDA in abovementioned case.

Based on all this, TI BiH once again appeals to political parties to take responsibility towards citizens who elect them, and especially appeals on CEC, to whom TI BiH is going to direct demand to investigate two abovementioned cases, to penalize these actions adequately and to prevent further abuse of public resources by political parties and their representatives. Also, TI BiH appeals to all citizens to take mentioned cases into consideration when giving their vote on the elections and to make their decision based on the level of accountability that political parties have showed in the previous period.