One of the former senior officials in the Office of the High Representative (OHR), German Alexander Rhotert, in the author’s text, underlined that the long-standing problem in Bosnia and Herzegovina was not resolved even before the new elections.
Alexander Rhotert said that it is finally time to end the constitutional inequality of national minorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“October 2 is election day again in Bosnia and Herzegovina. More than 25 years have passed since the first post-war elections in 1996. Since 2009, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled eight times in favor of plaintiffs who appealed to the court against the state.
Bosnia discriminates against all 17 national minorities in the country because the constitution provides for ethnic proportional representation in favor of the three constituent peoples – Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. Therefore, a Jew cannot run for president, and a Roma cannot run for the upper house of parliament,” said Rhotert.
He points out that nothing will change this year with regard to prosecutors who define themselves as “citizens” of Bosnia and Herzegovina, such as the president of the Jewish community Jakob Finci or the president of the Roma community Dervo Sejdić.
“For the representatives of the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union), who are overrepresented in the institutions in relation to their number, there is obviously nothing that could quench their thirst for power,” he added.
He also states that “in this extremely explosive political controversy, the high representative of the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Christian Schmidt, made the HDZ case his own”.
“Instead of working to implement the decisions of the European courts, he ignores them,” emphasizes the former OHR employee.
He also recalls the replcement of the Israeli ambassador in charge of Albania and BiH for the letter he sent in favor of HDZ’s proposal to reform the electoral legislation.
“On August 24, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid replaced the Israeli ambassador to Albania, who was also responsible for Bosnia. In the background is the ambassador’s letter of support to HDZ leader Dragan Čović. This was preceded by Čović’s visit to Jerusalem. The fact is that after returning to Mostar paid tribute to members of the fascist Croatian Ustasha army at the military cemetery there. Jakob Finci also harshly criticized the ambassador’s support for HDZ and Čović,” he added.
Rhotert, who worked in BiH from 1999 to 2016, believes that after the elections, the focus should be on implementing the judgments from Strasbourg so that one day a “citizen” of Bosnia and Herzegovina could become president, regardless of confession or ethnic group, Klix.ba writes.
