Who Pays for the Election Campaign? Parties Concealed BAM 2.6 Million in Reports, Election Law Amendments Failed to Prevent Misuse of Resources

Sarajevo, March 17, 2025 – Political parties concealed at least BAM 2.6 million in campaign expenses in their post-election financial reports, while the amendments to the Election Law imposed by the OHR failed to prevent the misuse of public resources, according to a Transparency International in BiH report on the monitoring of the Local Elections, presented today in Sarajevo.

The legal amendments were intended to regulate party financing and prevent the abuse of institutional resources, public funds, and official functions for campaign purposes. However, TI BiH’s data shows that all levels of government distributed approximately BAM 60 million in one-off payments to pensioners and other social groups before the elections. Although the law clearly prohibits indirect vote-buying through public funds, these provisions were rendered ineffective in practice due to the way the Central Election Commission (CEC) applied them.

The CEC received over 200 reports of resource misuse from various sources, yet sanctions were issued in only 6% of cases, mostly related to the misuse of communication tools on social media.

In terms of campaign spending, TI BiH’s monitoring of pre-election rallies and advertising via billboards, media, and social networks estimated that parties spent over BAM 12.3 million. However, in their official post-election reports, all parties collectively reported only BAM 9.7 million in campaign expenditures. This is BAM 2.6 million less than TI BiH’s calculation based solely on four campaign segments, with the SNSD alone concealing approximately BAM 1 million.

During a panel discussion held at Europe House in Sarajevo, representatives of political parties, the Central Election Commission, and civil society emphasized the need to further improve election legislation and called on Members of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH to adopt the necessary technical amendments to the Election Law.

The goal should be to introduce new technologies and solutions to prevent electoral result manipulation, vote-trading in polling station committees, and the misuse of public resources. Existing legal provisions restricting the use of public resources need to be strengthened, and limitations on public spending during the pre-election period must be established.

It is also essential to improve transparency in campaign financing, as the current legal framework enables political parties to finance a significant part of their campaigns through prohibited sources, namely privileged private companies that do business with the public sector.