“The election will be held on Sunday 2 October and the funds for the election have to be secured within 15 days of calling the election,” SIP president Suad Arnautović said after the decision on the election was adopted.
Around €6 million has to be secured to conduct the election, which is to be decided by the Council of Ministers. The decision is uncertain at this point because the 2022 budget has not been adopted yet.
Only one of the two Croat members of the electoral commission voted against calling the election.
“There are no legal provisions or conditions at the moment to hold a free and democratic election in line with the Constitution,” Vlado Rogić said. He claimed that a permanent election crisis has existed in BiH for years.
Rogić said that it is clear to everyone that a ruling by the European Court for Human Rights and the BiH Constitutional Court in the Ljubić case have not been implemented, which practically repealed the part of the election law that defines the way in which the House of Peoples in the Bosniak-Croat Federation entity is formed.
“In this case, there is no legal void and it cannot be resolved in any other way except to adopt new legislative provisions. We know that the Constitutional Court has ordered that, but those provisions have still not been adopted and BiH is getting into a situation where there are no provisions on key issues such as the election of certain bodies,” Rogić said.
SIP member Vanja Bjelica Prutina claimed that Rogić’s interpretation of legal void is unfounded and that there is no basis to defer the election because it is defined by the existing election law.
“I’m personally disappointed because parliament has failed to implement the rulings for years and that is truly defeating. However, that cannot affect the obligation to call an election,” Bjelica Prutina said.
Also adopted were implementing acts and time limits, as well as a decision to conclude the electoral roll as it was on 3 May.
BiH citizens will vote for three members of the country’s presidency, the House of Representatives of the BiH Parliament and of the Federation entity parliament, the National Assembly of the Republika Srpska entity and the president and vice president of that entity.
Cantonal councils in the Federation entity are elected directly. Cantonal councillors will then be delegated to form the new House of Peoples in the Federation entity, who in turn will elect delegates to the House of Peoples in the state parliament. A new speaker and two deputy speakers of the Federation parliament are elected indirectly.
For more, make sure to check out our dedicated politics section.
