Although general elections are scheduled for October, it is not clear how the House of Peoples (HoP) in the Federation entity or on state-level will be constituted without a new election law, a Serb representative in Bosnia’s House of Peoples said.

Bosnia’s Central Election Commission has today announced the general elections will take place on October 7.

Two years ago the Constitutional Court ruled that some provisions of the Election Law were inconsistent with the state Constitution. Since then the authorities have failed to act in the legally allowed time-frame, resulting in a further court ruling that deleted two sections of the Election Law that treats the matter of representation in the HoP of Bosnia’s semi-autonomous entity which is shared by Bosniaks and Croats.

“Unfortunately, certain ambassadors have gotten involved in the process again. I think that is a wrong approach,” Nebojsa Radmanovic said in a press conference today.

The lawmaker also pointed out that his Alliance of Independent Social-Democrats (SNSD), the party in power in Bosnia’s other semi-autonomous entity, Republika Srpska (RS), is worried about Bosnian Serbs being excluded from negotiations.

“Today we express dissatisfaction that the negotiations on the Election Law were lead without Serb representatives, and not only those from the SNSD. It is interesting that Serb representatives in the Council of Ministers did not react,” he said, referring to representatives of Serbs from an alliance of opposition parties to the SNSD who are in power on state level.