At the beginning of October, the high representative imposed changes to the Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)and the Constitution of the Federation of BiH (FBiH), which probably permanently cemented the position of ethnonationalparties in power.
It seems that there were not many who were bothered by it until the moment when it became clear that the SDA with the DF will have 13 delegates in the House of Peoples of the FBiH.
Currently, the ”Eight” and HDZ are looking for a way to bypass the SDA in the formation of the government, which is basically impossible according to the current FBiH Constitution precisely because of Christian Schmidt’s decision, so they took a different path, in the direction of a new, actually incorrect, interpretation of the decision of the high representative and preparing the public for possible new intervention by the Office of the High Representative (OHR).
Because of this, individuals from politics, the academic community, and some media, as well as non-governmental organizations, began to misinterpret Schmidt’s decision. At the same time, others began to call on the high representative to intervene and stop the SDA in preventing the formation of the FBiH Government.
New intervention of the OHR
At the same time, information appeared that the high representative could supposedly solve the stalemate with a new decision in two ways. The first is to make a temporary decision according to which, at least in this cycle, different rules would apply and by which the SDA would be bypassed.
The second would be such as to bring about a permanent change in the way of electing the leadership of the FBiH. Why two scenarios?
One of the possible goals is to create the perception that there really is a possibility to weaken the influence of the caucuses of peoples and thereby convince the public that another imposition or some kind of authentic interpretation would be justified. Given that everything Schmidt has done so far was aimed at securing the position of HDZ, it is impossible to expect that he will now go against the original decision.
This is confirmed by all the talk in that direction about misinterpreting the decision and confusing the public, because it would never have been released as an option if there was any possibility that HDZ would permanently lose political power by weakening the authority of the caucuses of peoples in the House of Peoples of FBiH. To recall, during the negotiations, the HDZ did not want to agree to reducing the powers of the House of Peoples, because it was aware of how much power it had.
If Schmidt intervenes in any way, it will only be in the direction of temporarily preventing the SDA from stopping the formation of the new FBiH Government through the Vice President of the FBiH.
No one in the parties of the ”Eight” or in the international community had any idea, even though journalists had been warning about it for months, that the strengthening of the HDZ by raising the threshold for the election of the president and vice president of the FBiH from a third (6 out of 17) to almost half (11 of 23) mean the same in the opposite direction, the strengthening of SDA or national parties in general, Klix.ba reports.
E.Dz.
