Zeljko Komsic, the Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), while participating at the Bled Strategic Forum, emphasized the need to reject constitutivity.
He pointed out that giving up the concept of constitutivity has its legal, political, and moral justification.
“When it comes to the legal aspect, we cannot lose sight of the fact that the European Court of Human Rights in the cases of Zornic and Sejdic and Finci clearly stressed that constitutivity had to be agreed due to genocide and ethnic cleansing and that so many years after the conflict the time has come to introduce full democracy. Whoever does not believe me, let them read those verdicts, ” stated Komsic.
Komsic noted that the objections regarding the existence of appeals that were filed at the Constitutional Court of BiH 20 years ago, which in accordance with the existing Constitution establish the existence of constitutivity, do not say anything against the request of the European Court of Human Rights toreject constitutivity, but the contrary. They support that request.
“European judgments were passed after these appeals, and we know that the European Convention on Human Rights has priority in that sense. Therefore, legally, the rejection of constitutivity is our international obligation, given that the Strasbourg judgments must be respected. From a political point of view, constitutivity is an ethnic concept that finds its origin in the political and legal relations of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), in the so-called ‘people’s democracy’, and this concept was also present in our former state, which, like socialism and its ideology, failed, ” told Komsic.
He said that the Dayton Constitution is a compromise between Western civil democracy, including American democracy, and constitutivity as a legacy of communism.
“It is a temporary compromise between the civic and ethnic concept. Given that on an ideological but also practical level I am in favor of a civic state, in principle one man one vote, a state with one president, and reduced powers of that president, a state that would have one prime ministerial office model instead of three presidents and unrealistic supremacy of the House of Peoples over the House of Representatives, considering all of this, and the judgments of the European Union (EU) court that give me the right, I openly, transparently, and consistently advocate the rejection of constitutionality and the formation of a civic state, a normal state, such as all democratic states in the world. A state in which the fact that you are a Bosniak, a Croat, a Serb, a Roma, Jew must be neither an advantage nor an aggravating circumstance. So, for the equality of all citizens, their rights, identities, whether they are ethnic, religious, or some other kind,” explained Komsic.
In the end, he concluded that from a moral point of view, there is nothing wrong with finally introducing democratic decision-making instead of ethnic decision-making, which is unfortunately still dominant, and that is not only a legal and political but also a moral category.
“A society in which there is an ethnic norm, for example in employment, where one looks at ethnicity and consequently party affiliation, and not primarily at the ability of the citizen as an individual, such a society cannot prosper. Only a society in which is ethnically respected as an identity, but is not taken as any criteria, in anything, can move forward,” Komsic pointed out, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
