When politicians fail to agree, decisions of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) are awaited. On the other hand, the question arises: do domestic politicians always expect someone else to do their job? And when decisions are made, reactions are nothing new.
We are used to the decisions of High Representatives because in BiH it is difficult to reach an agreement between domestic politicians and it has been so for years, citizens say.
We must be aware of the fact that the High Representative is a constitutional-legal category in BiH, that is, a type of protectorate, experts point out. They add that decisions, such as the one made by the High Representative in BiH Christian Schmidt, may still act more like meeting certain political pressures of domestic political actors and structures.
“These kinds of decisions can call into question the will of the voters, the citizens who expressed their will in the elections themselves, and the behavior of local politicians can act simply as irresponsible politicking, in fact, a classic struggle for power,” believes Professor Dr. Jasmina Beslagic, Faculty of Law, University of Bihac.
Professor of the Faculty of Law in Istocno Sarajevo Goran Markovic says that the problem is that we have a High Representative who interprets his role in BiH too broadly and in a way that it is not defined in the Dayton Peace Agreement itself, more precisely in its Annex 10.
“And that very broad interpretation, incorrect in my opinion, has been going on for quite a long time, it has taken root, and in my opinion it is illegal,” Markovic explained.
High Representatives have repeatedly intervened in the electoral law and entity constitutions, and in the last twenty years these interventions have been in favor of the forces advocating for the centralization and even unitization of BiH, says political analyst Milan Sitarski.
“Then we had a kind of salto mortale in the interventionism of the High Representatives, last year, that is, on October 2nd, on election night, when the High Representative Schmidt, in a way, mitigated the consequences of Petric’s amendments”, he believes.
The decision of the High Representative in BiH is, from the point of view of international law, legal, especially in accordance with the mandate of the High Representative arising from Annex 10 of the Dayton Agreement, experts remind.
“Because already two consecutive mandates that the federal government would spend in a technical mandate, it would be something that is really very bad for the functioning of the government and for the rule of law in BiH,” Faris Hasanovic stated, Faculty of Law at the University of Tuzla.
One of the surveyed citizens, while waiting for the decision of the High Representative Christian Schmidt, briefly said during the past few days: “What got tangled up, must be untangled”.
