ZAGREB, June 11, 2018 – Božo Ljubić, a senior official of the Croatian National Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HNS BiH), the umbrella organisation of Croat political parties in that country, on Sunday criticised the international community’s High Representative Valentin Inzko, saying that he was advocating violation of the country’s constitution and proposing changes to the election law that favoured Bosniak parties and were to the detriment of Croats.
Inzko has said that the implementation of a Constitutional Court ruling on the election of deputies to the upper chamber of the national parliament, the House of Peoples, whose members are equally distributed among the three constituent ethnic groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina, should include provisions of the constitution of the Croat-Bosniak entity, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, under which each canton should have its representatives from all constituent peoples in the Federation Parliament’s House of Peoples, as well as that in that process, one should use the 1991 census.
Ljubić said this was contrary to the Constitutional Court’s decision on a complaint he had filed as speaker of the House of Representatives of the state-level parliament. The Constitutional Court in 2017 abrogated provisions of the country’s election law under which cantons elected one deputy each from each constituent ethnic group, ordering that instead of the 1991 census, the last census, conducted in 2013, be used to determine how many deputies should be elected to the country’s representative bodies.
The BiH Constitutional Court abolished provisions of the election law that were previously imposed by international officials and which the High Representative again insists on, Ljubić said, adding that Inzko was proposing solutions that were to the detriment of the Croat community and expressing doubt that he could offer a solution to the current crisis caused by the lack of rules on the election of deputies to the Federation House of Peoples, about which representatives of international organisations and representatives of the Croat and Bosniak political parties have been negotiating for months.
If the election law is not amended, there is a danger that it will not be possible to implement the outcome of general elections set for October.
