Changes of the Election Law the main Croat party is advocating for are contradictory to the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights which supersede local court decisions and have to be implemented first, said the head of the Transitional Justice NGO and journalist, Dzenana Karup Drusko, on Monday.

The Human Rights Court ruled in several cases that Bosnia’s Constitution violates the rights of minorities as it does not let them be presidents or lawmakers in the upper house.

According to the country’s Constitution – which is part of the Dayton Peace Agreement – only Serbs, Bosniaks or Croats can hold those posts.

However, after a Bosnian Croat entered the three-member Presidency in the last election thanks to Bosniak votes, the Croat Democratic Union (HDZ BiH) raised the issue with Bosnia’s Constitutional Court.

It cited the Constitution that said that each of the three major groups in Bosnia can elect their representatives into the Presidency. The current Bosnian Croat member, therefore, was not the choice of Croats but of Bosniaks, the HDZ BiH argued.

The Court ruled in favour of the party.

That ruling, however, contradicts a previous ruling of the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg which said that everybody has the right to vote for whomever they want and has the right to be chosen to serve any political post.

The changes the HDZ BiH desires aim to strengthen the position of 120,000 Croats in the south of the country where they are the majority but reduce the rights of 200,000 Croats from other parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Karup Drusko said.

On Monday, the head of the HDZ BiH, Dragan Covic, took over the chairmanship of the upper house of Bosnia’s Parliament.

He has been the most vocal advocate of the implementation of the Bosnian Constitutional Court ruling.

His new position requires him, however, to first implement the Strasbourg ruling.

“Now that Dragan Covic has assumed his new post, when is he going to implement the rulings of the Court of Human Rights?” Karup Drusko asked.