A day after the emergency session of Bosnian House of Peoples on changes to the Election Law was cancelled due to the lack of quorum, Bosniak Caucus invoked the vital national interest in a new session on Wednesday regarding the amendments to the said law proposed by the main Croat ethnic party HDZ BiH.

“We declare this proposal detrimental to the vital national interest of the Bosniak people,” said House of Peoples member representing the Bosniak caucus, Asim Sarajlic.

Sarajlic is one of three Bosniak delegates, all members of the SDA party, who refused to show up on Tuesday at the House of People session, causing the lack of quorum, in a protest against the law changes proposed by the HDZ BiH. SDA leader and House of Peoples member Bakir Izetbegovic called the law amendments “unconstitutional” and “contrary to the (Bosnia's Bosniak-Croat shared entity) Federation (FBiH),” adding that such law changes have not been agreed on.

He said the situation with Election Law changes would get even more complicated should this law be adopted, noting that it could only be adopted with the votes of the HDZ BiH and the SNSD delegates.

This prompted the reaction of international institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the US Embassy condemning the actions of the three political parties assessing them as a “collective failure” to “fulfill their constitutional responsibilities.”

The embassy slammed the HDZ BiH and SNSD for “inappropriately” using the emergency procedure to submit a “take it or leace it electoral reform proposal that had already been determined to contradict EU legal and human rights standards,” but also called out the SDA for the decision to “abuse the HoP quorum requirements to block the discussion (…).”

EU ambassador to BiH Johann Sattler said this was “yet another disappointing day for BiH politics.”

After the Tuesday's failed session attempt, the HDZ BiH rescheduled the vote for Wednesday which the Bosniak delegates attended but decided to prevent the law adoption and use the constitutional instrument to invoke the vital national interest protection, which the Croat and Serb caucuses rejected.

The session has been adjourned and the issue will be discussed by representatives of the caucuses in a session that is yet to be scheduled.

The US-EU mediated political talks on electoral reform, with the SDA and the HDZ BiH leadership as main actors, have not so far give any results. The last round of talks was held end of March and was declared unsuccessful. The foreign representatives in the talks said they exhausted all options but stressing, however, that boycott of the elections planned for October   would not be a wise move.