Bosnia's House of Representatives has approved a proposal of election law amendments on Tuesday that should enable the city of Mostar to hold local elections after 12 years.
The proposal was the result of a recent agreement between the main Bosniak and main Bosnian Croat parties which had quarrelled about the Mostar elections for years.
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Mostar saw its last local election in 2008. Two years later, the Constitutional Court ruled that parts of the Election Law referring to Mostar were unconstitutional and tasked the state Parliament in 2010 to amend it.
This did not happen for more than a decade, mostly due to a disagreement between the ruling parties in the city, the Party for Democratic Action (SDA) and Bosnia’s Croat Democratic Union (HDZ BiH).
The leaders of the two parties recently came to an agreement that should enable the long-overdue election to take place.
A total of 20 MPs voted in favour of the amendments, nine voted against and six abstained.
The changes will have to be approved by the House of Peoples which was asked to discuss them in an urgent procedure.
Social Democratic Party (SDP) MP, Nermin Niksic, said during the session that his party found the proposal “completely unacceptable” because it was “grossly ignoring Bosnia’s institutions as it was being negotiated by only two political entities which have been the cause of the problem for 20 years, and not a factor in solving it.”
“The agreement between the two parties, SDA and HDZ BiH, which was turned into a law proposal is dangerous for Mostar and Bosnia and Herzegovina in many ways as we see it,” Niksic said.
“The agreement is trying to kill the idea of a multi-ethnic, civic Mostar as it was before the war, which many of Mostar’s citizens are still not giving up on,” he said.
MP from the Democratic Front (DF), Dzenan Dzonlagic, pointed out that the proposal does not set a deadline for the Mostar election and that it will be “very difficult, nearly impossible” for local elections in the city to take place at the same time as in other places across the country.
But the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives and HDZ BiH member, Borjana Kristo, who was one of the signatories of the proposal, defended the proposal, saying that it is in line with the ruling handed down by Bosnia’s Constitutional Court.
She argued that the parliament “never fulfilled its duty” in implementing the ruling.
SDA’s Alma Colo said that she felt that the responsible thing to do was to enable the citizens of Mostar to finally have an election.
