The international community has given the city of Mostar to two political parties and that is why no election was held there for years, former Mostar Mayor, Safet Orucevic, told N1.

“It is due time for Mostar’s citizens to raise their voice and stop this tragic situation and ask for their democratic right to elect,” Orucevic said.

Mostar has not had an election for a decade now because the two main parties in power there have not been able to agree how to change the city’s electoral statute after the Constitutional Court ruled the existing one was violating the Constitution.

Right after the 1992-95 war, the city was divided between Bosniaks and Croats, each part having its own local administration.

But Bosnia’s top international official, Paddy Ashdown, ordered the city to be unified in 2004 and its new city-wide council to be formed with 35 members chosen from six electoral constituencies.

However, then Bosnia’s Constitutional Court ruled that the city's electoral statute was unconstitutional because constituencies each elected the same number of representatives to the city council although they had differing numbers of voters.

Since then, Mostar's two main parties, the Croat Democratic Union (HDZ) and the Party for Democratic Action (SDA), have been negotiating how to change this.

The SDA is representing the Bosniaks who are afraid to be dominated by the more numerous Croats in the city. It wants Mostar divided into municipalities for election purposes.

Meanwhile, the HDZ is advocating a unified city and a “one person, one vote” principle.

Their lack of agreement is keeping them in power for a decade.

Orucevic called the negotiations that have been ongoing between the two parties a “farce”, saying that “neither the SDA nor the HDZ will solve this exactly because the international community has awarded the city to two people and to two parties (…).”

Mostar’s citizens must put pressure on the international community and make it act on the issue so an election for a city council and a legitimate mayor can finally take place again, he said, adding that the current mayor of Mostar is not the mayor of the citizens, but the mayor chosen by (current High Representative) Valentin Inzko.

“The international community must stop this agony and prevent it from escalating into something much worse that we would regret a lot,” Orucevic said.