The voting process for the Mayor of the south-Bosnian City of Mostar must be secret and therefore the City Council needs to repeat the vote, the OSCE Mission to BiH, the European Union Delegation/European Union Special Representative, the Embassy of the United Kingdom, the Embassy of the United States, and the Office of the High Representative said Tuesday in a joint statement, after the newly elected City Council conducted the first round of votes publically, last week.

“On February 5, the newly appointed City Council of Mostar adopted a decision to conduct the election of the mayor of Mostar by public ballot. This decision contravenes Article 36 of the Statute of Mostar, which states that the elections in the City Council must be conducted by secret ballot. We, the undersigned, call on the City Council to bring its voting procedures back into compliance with the Statute of Mostar and to repeat the first round of elections for the mayor of Mostar,” the signatories wrote.

They noted that a country aspiring to become an EU Member State must adhere to the principles of the rule of law.

“We call upon all city councillors to show responsibility and to swiftly elect the Mayor in full accordance with the rule of law and the Statute of Mostar in its next session,” the joint statement said.

The new City Council of Mostar held its first session last week where it elected its leadership and formed the caucuses of representatives of constituent peoples in the body.

The mayoral vote was, however, postponed to February 10th.

The constitutive session of the City Council was stopped before the second round of voting in the mayoral vote after the councillors of the Coalition for Mostar, led by the strongest Bosniak party – the Democratic Action Party (SDA), left the session and demanded that it be adjourned.

Following the session, the country's international administrator, called the High Representative, who overseed the civilian implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the 1992-1995 war in the country, reacted saying the first round of votes for the Mayor was public and that according to the Mostar Statute, it must be done by a secret vote, urging them to repeat the process or he would intervene.