The ACIPS Political Council, POLIS, opines that the negative European Commission’s Bosnia and Herzegovina 2010 Progress Report directly points out to the negligence of local authorities. The discriminatory provisions of the BiH Constitution, based on which the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled in favour of the plaintiffs Sejdić and Finci against BiH in late 2009, have not been eliminated before the 2010 General Elections, which is the reason why BiH citizens have been denied their political rights once again.

The ACIPS Political Council, POLIS, wishes to congratulate BiH citizens, the civil society and the competent institutions, which have participated in this complex process, on the major step forward consisting in the BiH visa regime liberalisation. Today’s decision of the EU Council of Ministers proved the EU institutions’ credibility – living up to the promise that BiH would get a visa-free regime if it meets the Roadmap requirements.

Within the Initiative for the Monitoring of Political Parties' Pre-election Campaigns concerning the 2010 General Elections, the ACIPS team has shot a short film on the subject. Through this Initiative, the civil society would like to call all political structures, but also our country’s citizens, to account, before this year’s General Elections. You can watch the film here. Enjoy!

Today, in the Blue Building, ACIPS has presented the preliminary monitoring results, as well as the basic characteristics and trends related to the pre-election campaigns of the 2010 General Elections. ACIPS President, Sanel Huskić, has characterised the 2010 General Elections campaign as an “extremely dirty campaign”. “All the parties we have been monitoring, except SDP and NSRzB, conducted extremely offensive campaigns towards their opponents”, Huskić explains. The monitoring results can be seen here.