OSCE Croatia Mission calls for further reform of electoral legislation

ZAGREB, 22 December 2004 - In the aftermath of the presidential election due to be held on 2 January, the OSCE Mission to Croatia will submit proposals on electoral reform to the Croatian authorities.

The Mission's reform proposals will be based on a close examination of the evaluation reports to be issued by the State Election Commission (SEC) and GONG - Croatia's leading election support NGO. They will also include conclusions from a recent OSCE-sponsored roundtable with all major Croatian institutions involved with election issues.

The Head of the OSCE Mission to Croatia, Ambassador Peter Semneby, said that recent criticism of campaign financing, the timing of elections, media coverage, and the selection of candidates expressed by several presidential candidates highlighted the need to move forward with electoral reform.

He noted that following the monitoring of earlier presidential and parliamentary elections in Croatia between 1997 and 2003, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) made a series of recommendations for reform of Croatia's electoral system . While the OSCE will not conduct a formal monitoring of the presidential elections many of the recommendations reappear in successive election observation reports and have yet to be implemented.

"According to these recommendations and those of domestic actors such as GONG, the main areas requiring reform of electoral legislation are the: lack of a permanent body to administer elections; insufficient regulation of campaign financing; ineffective updating of voters' lists; and lack of a clear framework for out-of-country voting," said Ambassador Semneby.

He added that continued attention should be paid to media coverage of elections and access to public media. "The observations that we conducted with the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights during the parliamentary election campaign in 2003 showed that a balance was achieved only through a very formalistic coverage that many viewers did not find interesting," he said.

"On the positive side, we welcome the Government's intention to open three additional polling stations in Serbia. This will give more Croatian citizens living as refugees the opportunity to engage in Croatia's future," said Ambassador Semneby.

On 18 and 19 November 2004, the Mission, together with representatives of the ODIHR and the Venice Commission (Council of Europe), held a roundtable in Zagreb on electoral legislation reform to facilitate dialogue between Government, Parliamentary representatives, civil society, and academic experts.