The commission for the election and appointment of a new judge of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) from the quota of federal judges decided that it will sit again today due to the need to further harmonize the parliamentary majority, and the issue of choosing a judge is one of the most important in BiH.
The problem that this was not done yesterday is that certain members of the Commission do not want the House of Representatives to receive a list with two names, Marin Vukoja, who is close to the HDZ and is a leading civil servant, and Sanela Butigan-Gorusanovic, who is a judge and vice-president of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC).
The commission consists of 11 members, at least six of whom must vote to submit a list of names, rather than a single name, to the House of Representatives.
Why is the Constitutional Court more important than ever?
If a member of staff close to a political party were elected as a judge of the Constitutional Court, it would mean that out of loyalty or political agreements, when voting at the sessions of the Constitutional Court, he would appoint his court in accordance with the agreements of political leaders, and not in accordance with the Constitution.
Although the HDZ rejects the claims of Vukoja’s political closeness to that party, everyone needs to ask themselves how realistic it is that in today’s BiH some civil servant is not close to one of the parties.
Due to the particularly strongly expressed actions of the nationalist political parties in BiH, which have already announced during the following years, even decades, that they do not see the existence of our country in the form in which it is internationally recognized, the announcement of the confiscation of state property in order to provide the entities with ownership that will virtually give them the outlines of statehood and the desire for limited constitutional changes, it has never been more important who will be the judge of the Constitutional Court.
The Constitutional Court is the bulwark of the protection of the state against any form of unconstitutional activity, and in recent years it has been the first target of all those who are bothered by it in this capacity.
Yesterday’s message after the failed session of the Election Commission and the appointment of the Federation of BiH (FBiH) Parliament that the parliamentary majority will have to be additionally harmonized, unfortunately, sends the message that the selection of a judge could be politically decided analogously to claims about settlements, Klix.ba reports.
E.Dz.
