There are many political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), which makes institutions dysfunctional and creates confusion among citizens. Their number is not a reflection of how democratic the country is. On the contrary, it is an expression of anti-democratic tendencies that must be fought against. How?
In BiH until a few years ago, the number of parties that were dominant could be counted on the fingers of one hand. They were SDA, SDP, HDZ, SNSD, and SDS. Party disagreements, most often caused by the struggle for personal interests, resulted in individuals leaving the aforementioned parties and forming their own parties. We remind you how many political subjects were created only by SDA and SDP.
This happens because those who decide to create their own party(s) are aware that due to the low electoral threshold, which in BiH is three percent, they have a high chance of being elected as candidates of smaller parties. That look is all the greater if they are the holders of the list, which they mostly are. In addition, given the low electoral threshold and the size of the party, it is not impossible to win more than one mandate.
There is already a situation where one person makes a party – he has no membership, party bodies exist only in statute, but not in reality.
The aforementioned leads to a greater number of such individuals being elected to parliaments. It is not rare that the formation of the government depends on them the most, and they condition this on their predominant personal interests. They also dominate part of the institutions, because they also determine who will manage them. There are many clear examples of this, and among them is the Canton Sarajevo (CS) Assembly, and not only in the current convocation.
A large number of parties and candidates create confusion for citizens. The confusion is also reflected in the fact that it is no longer possible to see the difference between the parties. The difference does not exist because the disagreements are not political, or ideological, but the result of the struggle for personal interests.
Sead Turcalo, dean of the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Sarajevo (UNSA), is among those who believe that the party system in BiH can be improved so that the electoral threshold is higher than three percent.
”One of the useful changes in the electoral legislation would be to increase the electoral threshold to seven percent in two election cycles, after which the threshold would automatically decrease to five percent and remain at that percentage. This would solve the capture of institutions by parties (one-person companies) that get public companies, institutions, and ministries to manage for their ‘hand’. At the same time, consolidation of the political scene would be encouraged and the ideological profiling of parties would begin. At the moment, I don’t see that we have any ideological or ideological opposition at any level. It is only about the ‘political’ opposition. What do you think,” Professor Turcalo wrote.
BiH is an indicator that a low electoral threshold is not a guarantee that the country will be democratic. In fact, it is an indicator of democracy, which implies that the country is nominally democratic, but in which freedoms are restricted. This form of government is characteristic of former socialist countries.
In most of the most democratically developed countries, two parties dominate, one left-wing or liberal and one conservative. Among others, this is the case in the United States (U.S.), the United Kingdom (UK), and Germany, Klix.ba reports.
E.Dz.
