The issue of changing the method of electing members of the Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Presidency, which was imposed for months by the international community, but also by the HDZ as the most important in the relations between Croats and Bosniaks, suddenly, judging by the content of Christian Schmidt’s announced decision and the reactions to it, became irrelevant.
Apparently, the prepared decision of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) does not deal with the issue of the election of members of the Presidency at all, but only of the House of Peoples of the Federation of BiH (FBiH), which is surprising considering how much time the international community spent on the issue of the election of members of the Presidency of BiH. However, the most interesting thing about everything that is happening right now is the silence of Dragan Covic and HDZ.
Negotiations on electoral reform, which ended ingloriously in March, focused for months on the issue of the election of members of the Presidency, which suddenly fell into the background in terms of resolving Bosniak-Croat relations.
In October of last year, Matthew Palmer, the United States (U.S.) mediator for electoral reform, clearly indicated this, following the message of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the need for electoral reform and limited constitutional reform.
”First, as far as the decisions of the European Court are concerned, they refer to the national House of Peoples. When we talk about the decisions, the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, which is the basic principle for the U.S. to deal with what concerns the European Court, then it refers to the state House of Peoples,” Matthew Palmer said.
The judgments of the European Court of Human Rights primarily referred to the State House of Peoples and the Presidency of BiH and had nothing to do with HDZ’s demands for “legitimate representation”, but despite that they were used in this sense, to expand the demands. Demanding everything, HDZ wanted to achieve the most important thing, to gain control over the Croatian caucus in the House of Peoples of FBiH.
It turned out that the goal of the international community was primarily to change the way the House of Peoples of the FBiH was elected, under pressure from Croatian politics.
The messages sent by media close to the HDZ in recent days, without exception, support Schmidt’s announced decision, which concerns only the House of Peoples of the FBiH.
In this sense, although the document was not published at all, no doubt was expressed that the content of the decision would be unfavorable to the interests of Croatian politics in BiH. How did the question of electing members of the BiH Presidency suddenly become irrelevant?
In addition, for three days now, despite the importance of the topic that directly concerns the future position of the strongest Croatian party in BiH, Covic and HDZ have not spoken at all, which at the moment seems almost unbelievable.
Admittedly, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gordan Grlic Radman, during his stay in Bugojno, told Schmidt to impose the Election Law, as if he knew the content of the document.
In this sense, as long as Schmidt keeps the document out of the reach of the public, the only thing that can be concluded is that he succumbed to pressure from Zagreb and that he is afraid of the reaction of parties and citizens.
For years, the public was convinced that the issue of the method of electing a member of the Presidency of BiH was the main cause of the political crisis in BiH, which, by all accounts, was far from the truth, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
