27 Oct 2010 / 17:02
A recount of void ballots cast in the race for the Serb seat in Bosnia’s presidency in the country's October 3 general elections has found no signs of fraud, the country’s election commission announced on Wednesday.
Sabina Arslanagic
Only some 5,000 of over 60,000 void ballots could have been tampered with, and due to their number, they “could not have changed the outcome of the vote”, the commission said in a statement.
The recount showed that over 73 per cent of all void ballots were empty, and thus could not be considered “fraudulent or linked to any kind of election engineering,” it added.
The recount of void votes in the race for the Serb seat on Bosnia’s tripartite presidency was ordered last week amid accusations by the moderate opposition Party of Democratic Progress, PDP, of widespread rigging.
The election results published by the commission on October 18 showed that the Nebojsa Radmanovic from the nationalist Bosnian Serb party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, won the race against the PDP candidate by a narrow margin of 9,697 votes.
The PDP candidate Mladen Ivanic, who lost by less than two per cent, said he knew he had been “robbed”, but that it was even worse that “citizens had been robbed of their right to chose”.
For the past several years the SNSD has dominated the political scene in Republika Srpska, which elects the Serb member of Bosnia's central presidency.
Under the Dayton Peace Agreement which ended Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, the country was split into two semi-autonomous entities – the predominantly Serb Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat federation.
Each entity has its own parliament, government and president but the two are linked by weak central institutions.
Only some 5,000 of over 60,000 void ballots could have been tampered with, and due to their number, they “could not have changed the outcome of the vote”, the commission said in a statement.
The recount showed that over 73 per cent of all void ballots were empty, and thus could not be considered “fraudulent or linked to any kind of election engineering,” it added.
The recount of void votes in the race for the Serb seat on Bosnia’s tripartite presidency was ordered last week amid accusations by the moderate opposition Party of Democratic Progress, PDP, of widespread rigging.
The election results published by the commission on October 18 showed that the Nebojsa Radmanovic from the nationalist Bosnian Serb party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, won the race against the PDP candidate by a narrow margin of 9,697 votes.
The PDP candidate Mladen Ivanic, who lost by less than two per cent, said he knew he had been “robbed”, but that it was even worse that “citizens had been robbed of their right to chose”.
For the past several years the SNSD has dominated the political scene in Republika Srpska, which elects the Serb member of Bosnia's central presidency.
Under the Dayton Peace Agreement which ended Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, the country was split into two semi-autonomous entities – the predominantly Serb Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat federation.
Each entity has its own parliament, government and president but the two are linked by weak central institutions.
balkan insight
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου