At the opening of a mosque in a residential area outside Sarajevo, Reis-Ul-Ulema Ceric told the gathered that it was also the duty of every Muslim believer to go to the polls. His message was sent ahead of local elections, scheduled for next Saturday, 2 October.
Today's issue of the Sarajevo-nased daily 'Dnevni Avaz' quoted Ceric as saying that voters should vote for people "who are known for having worked and willing to continue working for our own benefit".
However, this unbiased suggestion followed after a long speech in which Ceric defended the politician and diplomat Muhamed Secirbegovic (also known as Sacirbey), who is under house arrest in New York waiting for a decision whether he will be handed over to Bosnian authorities on suspicion that he embezzled some two and a half million dollars of state funds while he worked as Bosnian foreign minister and ambassador to the UN.
"They are intimidating Europe and the world, only for that reason why somebody of us has met in New York with a man who defended Bosnia and our dignity before the entire world," Ceric said addressing thousands of believers who gathered for the opening of the mosque. The dignitary went on to say that there was no longer anybody who would forbid Muslims to meet with whom they want to meet and when they want to meet".
In this way, Ceric took over the duty to defend the Bosnian Presidency's chairman, Sulejman Tihic, the chief of (Muslims) Party of Democratic Action, who came under the fire of the media after he visited Sacirbegovic in his home in News York while he was on an official visit, payed by tax payers' money, to the United Nations.
The local media also reported that this move of Tihic should not be a surprise in the light of the fact that that it was the logical continuation of a policy carried out by the corrupt leadership of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA).
Apart from Ceric, the other 'defender' of Tihic's visit to Sacirbegovic was the 'Dnevni Avaz' daily which quoted that SDA president as saying that "he was not ashamed of people who defended Bosnia-Herzegovina".
Tihic also suggested that Sacirbegovic had not been an embezzler but the victim of a plot set up by the former government led by Social Democrats (SDP) which dared to check financial dealings of the Bosnian mission to the United Nations.
Reis Ceric made no mention of the SDP party in his speech on Saturday in order to avoid criticism that he was biased in the pre-election campaign. He, however, levelled the attack against the media which reported about Tihic's politically unwise move in New York and which try to make serious analyses of the situation in society.
Ceric branded the media which he disliked as a new form of the pre-war 'Duga' magazine from Belgrade which used to spread a greater Serbian nationalism.
Commenting on the fact that some Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) generals were waiting in The Hague for the commencement of their war crimes trials, Ceric said that "We and our generals did not perpetrate crimes".
At the end of his analysis of the social situation, Ceric told the gathered that "alcohol is an evil, drugs are evils, pornography is an evil, homosexuality is an evil", and warned that Islamic dignitaries in Bosnia were intending to proclaim as evil every act of buying a newspaper which "promotes debauchery"