Speaker of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) entity House of Peoples Lidija Bradara met with US Ambassador to Bosnia Maureen Cormack who initiated the meeting to get familiarised with the work of the House and with the progress of Bosnia’s Election Law reform.
Bradara informed the Ambassador of the previously adopted laws, the manner of functioning of the House, the parliamentary majority and the procedures for cooperation between the House of Peoples and House of Representatives of the FBiH.
The two also touched upon the Law on Constituencies and Number of Mandates in the FBiH Parliament.
“Bradara reiterated her earlier statements that there will be no problem in scheduling the session of the House of Peoples, but that a law that would be contrary to the state Election Law cannot be adopted in the Federation and that according to the verdict of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the state Parliamentary Assembly is the institution where changes to Bosnia’s Election Law should be made,” the House of Peoples said.
“Bradara recalled that the FBiH Government negatively assessed the Law on Constituencies in January this year only to later change its assessment to positive, during a session when all Croat lawmakers were absent from the session as they were absent in the House of Representatives when the said Draft Law was adopted, recently.”
Bosnian politicians and lawmakers have been struggling for two years now to amend the Election Law in a way that would implement the Constitutional Court's decision, which two years ago assessed as unconstitutional certain provisions of the law that refers to equal and proportional representation of peoples in the FBiH Parliament.
After a series of unsuccessful political talks, four parties seated in Sarajevo recently proposed the Federation's Law on Constituencies, which they believed would solve the issue of representation in the entity Parliament. The Croat parties refused to attend the Parliament's session discussing the Law, saying that the proposal “harshly ignored the Constitutional Court's decision.”
