Central Election Commission of BiH annulled the Certification for Participation in Elections of the United Srpska Party

At today’s session, the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina annulled the certification for participation in the elections of the United Srpska party. The president of this party, Nenad Stevandic, was fined 10,000 BAM. This decision of the CEC followed due to the publication of the video of this political party, which, according to the interpretation of the CEC, is a violation of the Election Law of BiH, and considering that this party has been punished before, they were given the most drastic punishment.

Stevandic said the decision was unacceptable and unsustainable and would be appealed to the Court of BiH.

The new pre-election video of the United Srpska and its leader Nenad Stevandic, due to its controversial content, received a lot of criticism in a short period of time. In the video released on September 19th, three young men appear, who stereotypically represent Albanians, Croats and Bosniaks, and the messages they utter are aggressive and allude to the aggressor motive of these peoples towards Serbs.

At the end of the video, Stevandic appears, otherwise a member of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, who says that the Republika Srpska is united and that it will always be that way, Klix.ba news portal reports.

Not only did the campaign for the local elections start several months before the law dictates, the BiH Central Election Commission (CEC) should also sanction such inappropriate videos that spread a completely unacceptable political message to any society, inciting national hatred and intolerance.

https://twitter.com/ujedinjenaSR/status/1307557993916047365?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1307557993916047365%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fsarajevotimes.com%2F168578-2%2F

The United Srpska later stated that this was not a pre-election video, as if there was not a single segment related to the elections in the video itself.

“This is a video presentation of the declaration adopted at the assembly of the United Srpska held on September 12, which speaks of the need for the necessary unity in the Republika Srpska on vital issues. There were several such videos and they did not have pre-election connotations,” they wrote.

Stevandic himself wrote that everything in the video is true.