Čović: Demand to Abolish House of Peoples Powers Violates Dayton Agreement

Čović wrote a letter to EU officials Ursula von der Leyen, Josep Borrell and Charles Michel, Croatia’s President Zoran Milanović, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković, as well as to Western diplomats to inform them about the HDZ-SDA talks that ended inconclusively on Sunday.

He said that the talks failed because the SDA made the electoral reform conditional on abolishing the legislative role of the House of Peoples, adding that such moves would lead to the Federation entity becoming a Bosniak statelet.

“As a representative of the policies pursued by the Croatian people, I underline that abolishing the legislative powers of the House of Peoples of the Parliament of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, reducing it to the role of protector of vital national interests and equating it with the Chamber of Peoples in Republika Srpska is a gross violation of the Washington and Dayton agreements and a serious threat to peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, Čović wrote. 

The House of Peoples of the Federation Parliament is ethnic-based and allows each of the three constituent peoples to participate in decision making and adoption of laws, and to choose executive bodies. On the other hand, in Republika Srpska, the Serb entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croats and Bosniaks cannot influence decisions taken by the majority Serb authorities, because the upper house of the Serb entity parliament has been completely disempowered. By redefining the upper house of the Bosniak-Croat entity parliament, Bosniaks who have four times the number of representative might exert full dominance over the Croats.

Čović said that this demand was a dangerous act of hostility aimed at reducing the Croats as a constituent people to the status of a national minority. He recalled the conclusions of a recent extraordinary meeting of the Croatian National Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina which announced that the Croats would call for the territorial reorganisation of the country if their disenfranchisement continued.

For more, check out our dedicated politics section.

 

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