Bosniak leader and head of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) Bakir Izetbegovic said on Friday that he expects the blockade concerning the formation of the government in the Bosniak-Croat shared Federation entity to end after his meeting with the Croat leader Dragan Covic and his Croat Democratic Union (HDZ BiH), which set for October 28.
“The SDA reiterated its demand for the formation of Bosnia's Parliamentary Assembly because a huge amount of funds are waiting to be used. We welcomed the HDZ BiH's readiness to improve the relations between our two parties. We also expect their proposal for the new Election Law not to be in a collision the European Commission's opinion and Human Rights Court verdicts,” Izetbegovic said following the inaugural session of the party leadership.
Back in December 2016, the Constitutional Court ruled partially in favour of a complaint lodged by former Croat Democratic Union politician Bozo Ljubic. At issue was the state election law provision dictating that cantons delegate at least one representative from each of the country’s three main ethnic groups to the Federation BiH (FBiH) entity House of Peoples. Ljubic argued that the Croat influence in cantons with majority Bosniak populations was unfairly diminished in the selection of delegates.
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The Court partially agreed with Ljubic. The ruling struck down a portion of Bosnia’s Election Law, stating that it must be amended within six months, without specifying changes.
But things did not end there. In 2009, Roma representative Dervo Sejdic and former head of the Jewish Community, Jakob Finci, sued Bosnia for its discriminatory Constitution barring them – as they are neither Bosniaks, Croats or Serbs – from running for Presidency. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled in favour of Sejdic and Finci, saying the state is discriminating against them as a Roma and a Jew.
Bosnia has, however, never managed to fix this issue because the ethnic-oriented parties prefer to keep it the way it is: that Serbs living in the Serb-dominated part of the country, Republika Srpska (RS), elect the Serb member of the country’s tripartite Presidency and that the other two members are elected by people living in the other half of the country which Bosniaks and Croats share, the Federation (FBiH).
The Bosniak leader touched upon the migrant crisis in the country saying that the situation is turning into a humanitarian catastrophe.
“This can't just be a problem of the Una-Sana Canton, the city of Bihac or municipalities with a Bosniak majority,” he warned.
When asked by N1's Slavisa Starcevic to comment on the recent developments regarding EU's decision not to begin accession talks with Northern Macedonia and Albania despite the two countries fulfilling all the conditions for the talks, the SDA leader said the EU is sending a wrong message to aspiring member states.
“They keep talking of the EU expansion but they send depressing messages. Regardless, we will continue implementing reforms on the path to EU accession,” Izetbegovic concluded.
