The House of Peoples in the BiH entity of the Federation, on which depends the timing of the selection of the leadership of the executive government – president and two vice presidents, who propose a mandate-holder for the composition of the new entity government – will not be formed in accordance with legal guidelines before the deadline of 30 days after confirmation of the general election results in BiH, the Anadolu Agency reports.
Only one canton sent lists
Namely, as Maksida Piric, spokesperson for the Central Electoral Commission, confirmed, thus far, of the total ten cantons in the Federation, candidate lists for delegates in the House of Peoples have been received from only one canton – Central Bosnia.
The CIK BiH at a session at the end of November verified all eight candidate lists, on which are a total of 22 candidates.
Otherwise, the cantonal legislative bodies select 58 delegates to the House of Peoples, 17 each from the Bosniak, Serb, and Croat peoples, and seven from the “others.”
In accordance with Article 10.13 of the electoral law, selection of delegates to the FBiH House of Peoples happens immediately by convention of the cantonal assembly after elections for the cantonal assemblies, at the latest a month following certification of election results.
Serious delays in selecting all delegates to the FBiH House of Peoples will also be because the Serb caucus remains incomplete after the delegation of mandates by the cantons, in the second round, given that in the BiH general elections 16 of the required 17 delegates from the Serb people were elected to the ten cantonal assemblies, analysis by AA shows.
In accordance with this, the CIK BiH must enter a third round of election for the one missing delegate to the Serb caucus from the ranks of unelected candidates from lists of political subjects that would have a Serb representative, and then determine where, by mandate-dividing quotient, the delegate belongs in the cantonal assemblies.
The thus-selected representative of the Serb people will not be a delegate in the canton’s assembly, as would usually be the case in accordance with the FBiH constitution, but rather simply a delegate to the House of Peoples.
In the first round of mandate allocation for the House of Peoples, the places for the Bosniak and Serb delegates from West Herzegovina Canton were not filled, because all 23 elected representatives in the assembly are exclusively Croat.
From the Tuzla Canton, in accordance with the prescribed regulations, it will not be possible to fill a delegate from the Croat people in the first round, nor two from the ranks of the “other” or a delegate from the Serb people. Namely, the Tuzla Assembly elected 34 Bosniaks to the 35 total places, with the remaining filled by a Serb. Two Serb delegates will thus be selected from the Tuzla Assembly.
Missing Serb delegates
It will not be possible to select even a single Serb delegate from the Zenica-Doboj Cantonal Assembly, but two will be elected.
There is no Serb delegate to the Posavina Cantonal Assembly, but according to legal regulations a House delegate should be selected.
A representative of the “others” cannot be selected from the Central Bosnia Assembly, because there is no one who identifies as such among the cantonal assembly members.
Selection of the missing delegates from the Serb people from Posavina, Zenica-Doboj, Tuzla, and West Herzegovina Cantons, the representative of the Bosniak people from West Herzegovina, and representatives of the Croat people and the “others” from Tuzla and one “other” from Central Bosnia will be done by reallocation of mandate, in the second round of elections, and from the cantonal assemblies in which there are Serbs, Bosniaks, Croats, and “others.”
Only in Una-Sana, Podrinje, Herzegovina-Neretva, Sarajevo, and Livno (Canton 10) Cantons can be selected delegates to the House of Peoples, in accordance with legal prescriptions.
The missing delegates from the Serb people can be partially compensated for in the second round with two from Canton 10 and one from Herzegovina-Neretva Canton.
Simultaneously, candidates from the “others” who are missing in the second round will be able to be filled from the Una-Sana Cantonal Assembly, where there are two representatives, and the same from the Sarajevo Cantonal Assembly, where there is a “surplus,” and one each from ZDK and BPK. With that, the number of representatives of the “others” in the ten cantonal assemblies in the Federation will be three greater than were selected in total – seven.
The missing representative of the Croat people from Tuzla Canton can be compensated from the BPK, SBK, HNK, ZHK, KS, and Canton 10 assemblies, and the missing Bosniak representative from ZHK can be filled from any other canton in the Federation.
According to the AA analysis, in the ten cantonal assemblies in the Federation, on the basis of data from the CIK BiH, a total of 171 Bosniak, 92 Croat, 16 Serb, and 10 “other” representatives were elected.
The caucuses of the House of Peoples select the president and vice presidents of the entity, who with a general majority include the support of at least a third of the caucuses of each constitutive people. The FBiH president, with the consent of the vice presidents, proposes a mandate-holder to compose the entity government, which is confirmed by the second house, the House of Representatives.
The constitutive session of the House of Representatives is scheduled for Tuesday, 2 December, several days after the deadline. Namely, the House of Representatives should be constituted 20 days after confirmation of the general election results in BiH, which the CIK BiH did on 10 November. In keeping with this, the House of Representatives should have held its constitutive session by the last day of November.
At the same time, the constitutive session of the RS National Assembly was held on 24 November, at which Nedeljko Cubrilovic was elected assembly president, and the procedure to elect delegates to the Council of Peoples of RS was launched.
At the constitutive session, Milorad Dodik, president of RS, and Ramiz Salkic (Bosniak vice president) and Josip Jerkovic (Croat vice president) swore oaths and have already taken over their duties.
On Sunday, Dodik gave the mandate to form a government once again to Zeljka Cvijanovic, the current RS prime minister.
(Source: Oslobođenje)