prijava
SARAJEVO, July 5 (FENA) - Chair of the Interdepartmental Working Group for Amendments to the BiH Election Legislation Alma Čolo, after a meeting with US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Matthew Palmer and Director for Western Europe, Western Balkans, Turkey and the United Kingdom in the European External Action Service (EEAS) Angelina Eichhorst, stated that she thinks that citizens of BiH are tired of waiting for the implementation of BiH's obligations to the Council of Europe.
“They have been waiting for so many years for us to remove discrimination from the Constitution and the electoral system of BiH and for all those who are not only Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats to have the right to be candidates in the elections. This is an international obligation of BiH and we have to do that first,” Čolo believes.
According to her, what we need to do first are five judgments of the Court from Strasbourg, the rest are the subject of an agreement.
“I think that the representatives of HDZ and SNSD finally understood that it is inevitable, that the Constitution must be changed and we must work on that,” said Čolo.
She added that she is a bit worried about the position from RS, because "Chairman Dodik is constantly saying that he does not want to change the Constitution, but the five judgments of the Strasbourg Court are obligations of Dodik as well, not only obligations of people in the Federation of BiH."
She stressed that if BiH wants to move forward, then it must respect the verdicts and ODIHR's recommendations too.
When it comes to the asymmetric model of electing the members of the Presidency of BiH, she said that as someone who comes from SDA and as a lawyer, she believes that we cannot have an asymmetric election in one body.
“To choose one directly from RS, thus its legality and legitimacy is stronger. And to elect two indirectly, whether in the Parliament of the Federation or in the Parliament of the state of BiH. That is not acceptable to us. We have to look for another solution,” stated Čolo.
According to her, these are very delicate things.
She pointed out that the BiH Parliament is the only one responsible for implementing the judgments of the Court in Strasbourg, "no one else can do it, the leaders cannot do it anywhere else."
(FENA) A. B.
