Specially for "Time" from Banja Luka
Registering citizens to vote abroad is illegal, but a common practice in the past relations between sister parties on both sides of the Drina. Citizens from Republika Srpska who have residence and citizenship of Serbia can apply for elections in Serbia, in person. Under no circumstances can "members of the mobile team" of SNS do this on their behalf by reading their "Serbian" identity card.
The CRTA Transparency and Accountability Research Center published an audio recording in which Sara presents herself as an activist of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) in Banja Luka, offering citizens of Republika Srpska who hold dual citizenship "help" when registering to vote in the upcoming elections in Serbia. The case of "Sara from SNS Banjaluka" opened up numerous questions, primarily about how the parties, despite the rigorous law on the protection of personal data, got access to them and for what purposes they will (mis)use them. At the same time, he recalled the Belgrade elections in 2023, when tens of thousands of voters from Bosnia and Herzegovina voted in an organized manner in the neighboring country. Sara knew in advance that the person she invited had dual citizenship, which the invited person confirmed. Where she got that information remains unknown. But Anđela, whose phone number is registered to the office of the general director of Mtel, a company owned by the Serbian state, called users of this company asking them if they have dual citizenship, abusing personal data and the trust of users of this network. And that's the new normal.
ADVANCED SERBIAN TURMOIL
Until the publication of the content of Sara's call, the Serbian Progressive Party, founded in 2009 with the support of the party of the same name from Serbia and its president and vice-president Tomislav Nikolić and Aleksandar Vučić, was invisible in the public space of Republika Srpska. At the election assembly in 2010, in the presence of Tomislav Nikolić, Adam Šukalo was elected as its president, who today is the adviser to the President of the Republic of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, on regional issues. Šukalo supported the "Justice for David" movement and was an (independent) MP in the National Assembly of the Republic of Srpska until 2018. He also received a mandate in the National Assembly of Serbia in 2020. In September 2022, he, along with five other people, was detained in Banja Luka on suspicion of having committed the crime of "illegal influence on voters" - buying votes or bribing before the elections. Former handball player Vladimir Mandić (an influential member of the SNS Main Board in Serbia), Slobodan Lazović and Zlatko Selimović from Trebinje, and Dejan Slijepčević from Gack were also under police surveillance. The duty prosecutor of the District Public Prosecutor's Office of Banjaluka announced that "he was informed by the police officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Srpska, the Criminal Police Directorate, about the existence of operational knowledge that there is a possibility of influence on voters by six persons, who will be questioned about those circumstances. The six persons were interviewed for information, and after the interrogation, they left the official premises of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Srpska". The mentioned persons were not invited to the Prosecutor's Office for an interview. It was rumored publicly, and in the media, that he was detained on the order of Milorad Dodik because he was drilling the SNSD stronghold in Republika Srpska.
In 2011, after the poor results of the Serbian Progressive Party in the 2010 general elections, Šukal was removed from the post of president, and Jovan Mitrović from Zvornik took over. Šukalo disputes this, but after court rulings in 2013, Mitrović was confirmed as party president. Then Šukalo founded his own, Napredna Srpska (NS).
Court turmoil follows the party until 2018, when five different shades of progressives unite in the Serbian Progressive Party - original, unique, radical and additionally progressive. In 2018, former Minister of Internal Affairs of Republika Srpska Darko Matijašević became the president of the United Progressives, who will run for entity president that year. At that time, the party recorded only 3.595 votes and remained operating outside the parliament with about 0,50 percent of the votes won. She recorded the best electoral result in the general elections of 2014 with 2,11 percent of the votes.
Posts on the party's website date back to 2020. Six long years of silence until Sara's appearance.
IMPUNITY FEEDS LAWLESSNESS
The politically weak party is logistically supported by Mtel through the engaged collection of ID cards of the citizens of Republika Srpska. Recently, an email with copies of ID cards and requests for enrollment in the voter list for voting abroad arrived on the mailing list of business users of Mtel, most certainly by mistake. Soon, the e-mail that was hastily sent to the addresses of more than 60 company employees was marked as a virus, and everyone who received it was tested to determine that they had deleted and destroyed the "infected e-mail". Citizens of Prijedor were registered with the place of residence mostly in Zemun, then in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Novi Bečej.
Pavle Dimitrijević from Crta warned in the Bosnian media that "impunity is one of the key problems, given that the prosecutor's offices either do not take any action or order the police to collect certain data, and then the police do not respond". In his opinion, "the failure of the institutions to act further undermines confidence in the electoral process":
"What is certainly problematic is that any lack of reaction from the institutions actually encourages those who want to undermine the integrity of the election and to carry out various types of manipulations. And of course, this then has a negative impact on citizens' trust, which is still at a very, very low level."
And when there is a judicial epilogue, as was the case in the process in Doboj, as a rule, the verdicts go in favor of those who were part of the electoral fraud. Any resemblance is coincidental although the models are recognizable. Five years after the annulment of the local elections in Doboj in 2020, it was proven in court that the theft of votes in the elections took place according to the same model at all polling stations - by copying the votes of voters who did not go to the polls and the votes of the dead, who were not deleted from the voter list. The court verdict says that no one is guilty of the established criminal acts.
67 indictments were brought against 350 persons, and the Basic Court in Doboj issued 27 acquittals for 139 persons and only one suspended sentence against two persons. Most of the judgments were made according to the same pattern - election frauds were proven, but no evidence was found that the members of the election commissions were guilty of the frauds. Transparency International BiH analyzed 22 verdicts and found that in all cases, with material evidence and witness statements, the Prosecution managed to prove that the electoral will of citizens was most often changed according to two scenarios: voting on behalf of voters who did not go to the polls, most often those who live abroad, and voting on behalf of deceased persons who were not deleted from the voter list. Despite the "grounded suspicion" of the members of the electoral commissions, they remained in the electoral administration. And no trace of the principals.
Regardless of whether it was Sara from the almost phantom Serbian Progressive Party of Banja Luka, which is almost non-existent in the public and political space of Republika Srpska, or Anđela, who called from the number registered to the office of the general director of Mtel, the user's personal data and trust were seriously misused for political purposes. According to the good old custom, no one will be responsible for this, because the one who has political power controls the lives of his subjects and their personal data. After all, this is what a futuristic view of the electoral process looks like. The problem with the new normal is that no one dares question the idolatry of the party and national leader. What is left for citizens? That they keep their personal documents like eyes in their head and do not give them to anyone for inspection, especially not to those who have no legal right to ask them for it, that they beware of "inserted and malicious viruses" and that they delete them immediately as a preventive measure for their own safety, that they do not believe in miracles imported from the hateful West such as scanners and that they do not expect the reaction of the prosecution in Banja Luka, which should investigate whether Sara and Anđela are fished out examples or whether it is a mass illegal scheme.
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