Ahead of the key negotiations for changes to the Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), which start today in Sarajevo and then move to Neum, it is important to recall the position of the Venice Commission from one of the last rounds of negotiations.
The Venice Commission, as an advisory body to the Council of Europe dealing with constitutional and electoral issues, is also actively involved in unraveling BiH political knot. As it wasfound out, during the last round of negotiations in Sarajevo, members of the Venice Commission expressed specific views on key issues.
Thus, they emphasized that the members of the Presidency of BiH cannot be ethnically defined, but also that there is no grouping of municipalities into constituencies according to ethnic criteria, given that these were, among other things, ideas that were put on the table as an option.
After such an attitude was expressed by Simona Granata-Menghini, Secretary of the Venice Commission, United States (U.S.) diplomat Matthew Palmer suggested deleting ethnic prefixes in the election of members of the Presidency of BiH. As expected, such a proposal was rejected by Dragan Covic, the leader of the HDZ, who said that Croats could not agree to such a proposal.
This was followed by the HDZ’s proposal to introduce a definition that, for example, a member of the Presidency from the ranks of the Croatian people is also a representative of the Others (those who do not declare themselves one of the constituent peoples) and other members, which is essentially not the position of the Venice Commission.
Namely, the problem with the HDZ’s proposal for the Election Law is that such an idea cannot implement the judgment of the European Court in Strasbourg in the “Svetozar Pudaric” case. Pudaric won a lawsuit in court because, as a Serb from the FBiH, he cannot run for a member of the Presidency of BiH from the ranks of the Serb people.
The HDZ proposal implies that one member represents Croats and Others, that another from the FBiH represents Bosniaks and Others, and that a member from the Republika Srpska (RS)represents Serbs and Others. The question is who will then represent Serbs from the FBiH or Bosniaks and Croats in the RS.
In that way, deleting ethnic prefixes is imposed as the most simple solution.
Essentially, the position of the Venice Commission expressed in Sarajevo is based on the fact that the FBiH must be one constituency and that the lines of new constituencies cannot be drawn according to ethnic principles. But, anything is possible in politics, so it remains to be seen whether the Venice Commission will stick to its positions.
E.Dz.
Source: Klix.ba
