Nezavisne novine: SARAJEVO – The Central Election Commission (CEC) of BiH will revise all the decisions so far, related with the conflict of interest of appointed and elected officials in BiH.
This was confirmed yesterday by Suad Arnautović, the president of the CEC BiH, and he added that it will be verified also why in some cases decisions have not been made, and there was a suspicion that the conflict of interests existed.
“There are familiar names for whom the investigation was never initiated. We will check in the services of the CEC whether somebody gave them written or oral order for that”, said Arnautović.
He reminded that the CEC in February this year has put out of force the Instruction on Application of the Law on Conflict of Interests of BiH, according to which it worked from June 2003. Arnautović confirmed that the Constitutional Court of BiH received at least two appeals on earlier decisions of the CEC on the conflict of interests.
“Those are appeals of one municipal MP and one entity MP”, he said and added that in these cases the Court of BiH confirmed the decisions of the CEC.
Arnautović reminds that entity parliaments even after five years did not obey the provisions of the Law on Conflict of Interests of BiH, which stipulated that the laws on the level of entities were to be adopted within 60 days. He points out that that is one of the reasons why the CEC conducted checks of the conflict of interests for the officials from the lower levels of authority on the basis of the Instruction.
"The CEC estimated that now is the best moment to draw attention to this question, because the changes and the amendments to the Law on the Conflict of Interest are in the parliamentary procedure", said Arnautović and added that they wanted to put the Instruction out of force as early as May last year, but the international community asked that to be prolonged.
Safet Softić, the Chairman of the House of Representatives of the Parliament of the FBiH, said yesterday that he is surprised by a decision of the CEC to put the Instruction out of force and by that, bring all of their decisions in question.
“I do not want to justify the entity parliaments, but once they abolish the Instruction because it is not in accordance with the law, then remains the question on what basis were the people sanctioned”, said Softić.
In the PA of the RS they said that they still have not adopted the work plan, so it was not confirmed when this law will be on the agenda.
Punishments of up to four years
Suad Arnautović said to the elected and appointed officials on the lower levels of authority to think well whether they are accepting functions while they are in the conflict of interests “because they can be processed also retroactively within the next four years”.
“From February 4, 2008, when the instruction was put out of force, until February 4, 2012 is the period when the conflict of interest can be processed. In that period there is no time bar. So it is completely irrelevant who will process it, whether CEC or some other body, who will be authorised by the parliament of BiH or of the entities”, said Arnautović.