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CCI’s 9-monthly reports on monitoring the performance of all executive and legislative institutions in BiH have shown that the local election considerably slowed down the work of these institutions.

|wproSelectionStart||wproSelectionEnd|As part of the Civil Society Partnership Programme – CSSP Project, supported by USAID, CCI has been monitoring the performance of parliaments and governments at the state, entity and cantonal levels. Our reports on nine-monthly monitoring of the performance of these bodies have shown that during the pre-election campaign in September 2016, the parliaments did not hold sessions. Considering the fact that this was preceded by a season of vacations, the continuous time period during which the mentioned legislative bodies did not work was almost three months, which caused a delay in the process of law-making.

Summary reports on monitoring the performance are available for download from the following links:
BiH Parliamentary Assembly and Council of Ministers
The Republic of Srpska National Assembly and the Government
BiH Federation Parliament and Government

Great interest of the public and support of the citizens to the CCI’s campaign “Capable and not Suitable”.  

The problem of hiring in public services on the basis of the membership in a party has taken a huge space in both BiH and regional media in the past few months.

The journalists started writing more intensively about the concrete cases of political influence during employment in public administration, starting with FBiH Prime Minister’s daughter getting a job in a state agency, which resulted in her resigning due to a large public pressure.

In addition to the media attention, this problem occupied the entire BH public, as a number of dozens reports by the citizens to Centres for Civic Initiatives have been recorded in the past period showing support to the campaign for de-politicization of the public administration. They testified about their experiences in applying for jobs in public administration on the basis of public announcements, and attached the supporting documents, such as for example, the rank list of the successful from which a candidate from the middle of the list got a job, i.e. ranking as 31st. In parallel to them, concrete cases of politicization in employment were also reported by the employees in state institutions – these cases took place out of the public’s eye and were known only to the employees of that institution.   

Over 10.000 citizens’ signatures in support of the demands for modification of the laws governing the appointments and employment in the public administration, were collected in the past period.   

An initiative for programming a new law, of working title Law on Public Servants was sent to the entities’’ governments in November; this law would integrate, in a unique way, the whole public administration in entities. The working material of this Law was already prepared by CCI with the help of a wider group of experts from administration, domestic and foreign expert organizations and it will be officially forwarded to the governments at the beginning of 2017. 

In addition to the fact that a new Law on Public Service was enacted in Canton Sarajevo, in two more cantons, TC and USC, a procedure of enacting the same law was started, so CCI has already forwarded the Policy documents, and specific amendments to the Draft Law in order to improve these legal acts. Advocating the adoption of concrete proposals following the model of CS has been planned in the next period – just for the sake of reminding, the new Law on Public Service was adopted in this Canton at the end of July. The Law includes all the demands submitted by our project/campaign (e.g. the selection of the best ranking candidates, limiting the heads’ mandates, dissociating their mandate from the political mandate of the government, etc.).  

A unique methodology for measuring the degree of (de) politicization of the public sector was developed by the CCI project team in the past period.  The Methodology provides for a unique scheme of indicators such as transparency in announcing vacancies in public administration, public ranking criteria, public nature of interviews, participation of interviews in total scoring of the candidates, employing the highest ranking candidates, etc.  With the application of the said methodology, at the beginning of the next year, the first Monitoring Report on the Degree of Politicization of Public Administration will be published.  

These activities are implemented by the Centres of Civic Initiatives (CCI) with the support of the European Union, as part of the project „Strengthening the Integrity of the Public Sector: De-Politicization for the Rule of Law“ which aims at contributing to the rule of law and good governance in BiH, advocating the professionalism and the integrity of the public sector, especially the procedures of appointment and employment in the public sector. 

Partnership of CCI and 5 local communities in the prevention of floods. CCI started the implementation of a new project financed by EU Delegation in BiH.

The implementation of the project „Improving the System for Prevention and Protection Against Floods in the City of Bijeljina and the municipalities of Teočak, Lopare, Sapna and Šekovići“, started with signing of the Memorandum of Understanding with the most responsible persons in these local communities. This document was signed by the following persons: mayor of Bijeljina - Mićo Mićić, municipal mayor of Teočak - Tajib Muminović, municipal mayor of Lopare - Rado Savić, municipal mayor of Šekovići - Momir Ristić, while Ismet Omerović, the assistant of the municipal mayor of Sapna, Zudin Mahmutović, signed on behalf of the mayor. The Memorandum was signed on behalf of the Centres for Civic Initiatives by the executive director  Zlatan Ohranović.  The signatories' wish was that all the project tasks were implemented in the spirit of partnership relations, with an ultimate goal to strengthen the capacities of target municipalities in terms of preventing floods and protecting the citizens against potential natural catastrophes.  

Speaking of just some of the project goals, we would single out an intention to inform over 50.000 citizens about the plans and measures for prevention and protection against floods, with the actualization of the rights and obligations of the citizens in this field. Also, with the financial support of EU Delegation and a share of the local community units at the level of 20% (compared to the funds to be invested by EU), about 150.000 Euro will be invested in concrete infrastructure investments for cleaning and rehabilitation of the priorities among the damaged water courses and drainage systems as well as in strengthening the capacities and the level of technical equipment of the civil protection units.   

In order to make sure that the improvements that we aspire to are sustainable in a long term, we plan to make a comprehensive qualitative analysis of local regulations that define the field of prevention and protection against natural catastrophes focusing on floods. CCI will act in accordance with the findings of this analysis and with an engagement of prominent experts in protection against natural catastrophes, in order to improve the quality of the existing danger, assessments, and will work on making new annual programs and plans of protection and rescuing in natural catastrophes, etc.   

The third CCI report on monitoring the implementation of the Reform Agenda in BiH has been presented. Less than a half of the Agenda was implemented, the effects are insignificant, 

the rule of law is at a low level, and the governments present untrue data on employment, the level of debt and corruption.  

The Report “State of the Nation” gives a precise overview of indicators and the reaches of the reforms in the fields of public finances, business climate and competitiveness, labour market, social and pension policy, public administration and the rule of law, and the influence of everything stated on citizens’ standard of living.    

The implementation of the Reform Agenda is, due to political instability and abuse, slow and selective, and it does not give the expected results in most areas.  Looking cumulatively, for all the levels and actions plans, only 43% of measures from the Reform Agenda has been realized. Looking statistically, the BiH institutions, the Council of Ministers first of all, have the best level of realization of their Action Plan, but the fewest measures too. From the point of view of the total number of measures in plan and the number of adopted measures, the RS Government Action Plan has been implemented to the highest degree.  The Action Plan at the level of FBiH has been implemented to the lowest extent. 

The Report “State of the Nation” is published as part of the Campaign “Job to the People” by which CCI wishes to make a contribution to the implementation and effectiveness of the reforms in BiH. The integral report “State of the Nation” as well as more information about the campaign are available   at the website posaonarodu.ba.  

In addition to this, as part of the Project “Reforms and Job”, intensive efforts were put into the organization of student debates that represented a basis for informing the academic community about the reform process in BiH.  Students’ debates were held in Tuzla, Mostar and Gradiška. Students who participated in the debates were the students from the departments of Economics, Law and Political Sciences.   The main findings of the Report “State of the Nation” were presented to the present students. Over 200 students attended the debates; they showed great interest in the subject. The students’ debate held in Gradiška was also covered by regional and local media outlets. These debates served as a very good tool to test the understanding of the content of reports with the academic public. Additionally, students’ debates enabled space for cooperation with the academic community in CCI’s further activities.   

During this time CCI intensified the advocacy activities in relation to strengthening the role of public employment services and active employment policies, for which a precondition is to move the administration of health insurance of the unemployed from the public employment services.  This is one of the measures of the entities’ governments contained in the Reform Agenda. After CCI formally started an initiative to finally solve this issue, and after a few meetings with the Federal Labour Ministry, a firm promise was made that at the beginning of 2017 the legal material that was already prepared will find itself in the legislative procedure. This whole process will be monitored by CCI.

Currently, as part of this campaign, the preparation of the fourth issue of the Report “State of the Nation” is under way – this issue should be promoted in the second half of January 2017. The Report should be of the same format like the previous one, with a difference that this time, in addition to providing an overview of the situation of the reforms in the fields of effectiveness and realization, this report should offer a certain package of recommendations and conclusions on the subject of the reform process.  The second part of the promotion of the report will be carried out through the organization of parliamentary hearings in cooperation with FBiH Parliament, RS National Assembly and the Tuzla and/or Sarajevo Canton Assemblies.  

CCI has been implementing the Project “Reforms and Job” since September 2015, with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in BiH. Its main aim is to contribute to the increase in responsibility of BH authorities to decrease unemployment through active participation in initiating, making, implementation and monitoring of key economic reforms and new public policies contained in the Reform Agenda for BiH 2015-2018. The Project will offer periodical reports on the progress of the implementation of the Reforms Agenda, the effects of reformed public policies on the standard of living, and will at the same time initiate and advocate a number of activities that will contribute to the creation of new jobs. More on the campaign “Job to the People” is available on the website www.posaonarodu.ba. 

The representatives of the Coalition “Pod lupom” were present at 60.4% polling stations, of total number of regular polling stations, during holding of the local elections in BiH.  

At 2016 Local Elections, the “Pod lupom” Coalition engaged 2,883 observers, of whom 2,562 observers at as many polling stations, 120 observers in mobile teams, 141 observers in local election committees and 60 volunteers in the call center. 30,000 SMS messages were received in the call center on the Election Day. Mobile teams additionally covered over 600 polling stations, which at the end implies that the Coalition covered 3,162 polling stations, i.e. 60.4% of total number of regular polling stations. After the Election Day, the Coalition also observed the work of the Main Center for Counting and Local Election Committees until the finalization of the repeated counting of ballots in certain polling stations.  

A preliminary evaluation of the Election Day by the Coalition “Pod lupom” was that the in the majority polling stations and local election committees the election process was conducted in accordance with BiH Election Law, except in Stolac, where the elections were interrupted.  In certain municipalities there were some incident situations and irregularities in the form of breaching the Election Law and the implementation acts.   299 major violations of the Election Law and/or BH CEC implementation acts were reported by the Coalition observers on the Election Day, and about 120 citizens’ reports were received too.  The reports received on the incidents and irregularities indicate the problems in holding the elections. The Final Report on Monitoring 2016 Local Elections will be presented by “Pod lupom” Coalition on 22 December and will be published in February.

The Project BASE – Building Accountability and Systems in Elections is implemented by CCI in partnership with 5 more organizations from BiH and is supported by the Delegation of the European Union in BiH.   

The Conference “Social Dialogue and Reforms” was an opportunity for all the social dialogue actors to openly speak about the challenges and critical points of that process, in the light of the reforms implemented in the country.

The conference was held in Sarajevo in November, in cooperation with the EU project “Support to Social Partners in Social Dialogue” (SSPSD). The goal of the Conference was to gather all the participants in the social dialogue to openly speak about the challenges and the bottlenecks faced by them in the social dialogue, especially concerning the reform processes that are currently underway in BiH. Also, the Conference was an opportunity to evaluate the current state of the social dialogue and to try to agree on recommendations for further steps in improving the process and the mechanism of social dialogue in both entities as well as in Brčko District.  

The following were the participants in the conference: the representatives of EU Delegation in BiH, Embassy in BiH, Federal labour minister, representatives of Economic-Social Council of FBiH and cantons, the representatives of entities and cantonal associations of employers and trade unions, the associations of employers and trade unions of District Brčko, as well as of other relevant institutions, organizations and media. There were about 80 participants.  

A general conclusion of the participants and panelists of the Conference was that the consensus with social partners helped ensure the long-term viability of economic and social reforms, and that a constructive and efficient dialogue between the workers, employers and government representatives at all levels of power in Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the key challenges on the European road of BiH.

This and the other activities are part of the project “Strengthening the Understanding and the Capacity of Social Partners in BiH in Social Dialogue and Collective Bargaining” which aims at contributing to the strengthening of the social dialogue and collective bargaining in both entities in order to increase social cohesion and development of BiH society. The project is supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in BiH.    

“Audit of BiH Public Institutions – Unused Potential” is the name of the round table held in the organization of CCI, at the end of October 2016 in Sarajevo. 

Organizing the round table was initiated by the CCI’s Analysis of the same name, that was presented to the public a little earlier.  The goal of this event was to improve the existing practices related to taking over the role and the acting of all responsible and relevant actors in the process of implementing the audit at all levels of authorities in BiH.   

Over 50 participants took part in the Round Table: the representatives of top audit institutions in BiH, the representatives of parliamentary finance committees, the representatives of relevant prosecutors’ offices in charge of proceeding upon the findings in audit reports, representatives of finance ministries and representatives of non-governmental organizations and international institutions in BiH. The representatives of the institutions that have a certain role and responsibility in the process of making and proceeding upon the audit reports were included in the debate on how to achieve better functioning and independent work of audit institutions, as well as bigger responsibility in disposing of the public money. The recommendations and solutions that were reached during the Round Table, and those that will be submitted by the participants at a later stage will be officially sent to the relevant institutions, in the form of an initiative.