prijava
MOSTAR, July 7 (FENA) - HDZ BiH President Dragan Čović sent a letter to SDA President Bakir Izetbegović in which he responded to Izetbegovic's letter to Čović two days ago, regarding the process of amending the BiH Election Law.
We deliver the letter in its entirety below.
"I thank you for your letter of 5 July 2021, which you addressed to my name personally as the President of the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I gained detailed insight into its content, truthfully, via all Sarajevo media portals ahead of formal receipt.
This (media) letter after our joint political conversations on the reform of the Election Law, in which high representatives of the EU and the USA took part. I must admit that your persistent avoidance of the implementation of the Agreement, which we signed on 17 June 2020 in Mostar, astonishes but does not surprise. In that agreement, you will recall, we determined the timeframe very clearly for its implementation as well as the necessary content of the agreement.
It is indicative that you have only now, after the latest conversations with the officials of the administrations of the EU and the USA, put forth your official stance regarding the election to the House of Peoples and the Presidency of BiH, although you received our proposals a long time before. Those official propositions of yours are, I must point out, even more so unrealistic and distanced from the normative reality in relation to the proposals you previously informally presented in public. You have surely outdone yourself, in this manner, as all that that you „propose“ does not offer solutions at all for the concrete and necessary elimination of all forms of discrimination and the adoption of the necessity of legitimate representation, which has been, I remind, the topic of our longstanding conversations.
In your letter, you only presented the previously known obdurate political views. It sounds unreal from your part the calling upon on the April package and the opening of the question of jurisdictions of the House of Peoples of the FBiH, which has never even been a matter of work of any of the mentioned courts, and in that nor was it part of our Mostar Agreement.
I somewhat understand your aspiration, even your political determination, to turn the Federation of BiH into a Bosniac entity modelled on the Republika Srpska by disempowering the House of Peoples of the FBiH, which in your wish should be Bosniac, disguised by your vision of the civic. Therefore, not also of the Croat, of the Serb, and of the other citizens of the Federation of BiH. What is that, Mr. Izetbegović, but an agenda for divisions, the usurpation of peace, the Constitution, interethnic relations, the undermining of the European perspective of BiH?!
You cannot simultaneously cry over the fate of BiH, and, in reality, obstruct negotiations without offering credible solutions, which definitely harms BiH as well as all political factors that behave as such.
However, regardless of your public meaningful and meaningless tactics and games, I wish to remind you that we are still those who hold the key to success or failure in our hands and that no one else will not, cannot, nor should solve the problems that are primarily our obligation.
I point this out as I sometimes feel that you are not fully aware of this, or you deny that kind of responsibility due to the weaknesses and leadership issues that you evidently solve with difficulty on the overall Bosniac political scene. Be that as it may, it is clear that it is not advisable to use this chance for an agreement that we gained, with great trust, support and an honest friendly relation of the EU and the USA administrations, for our personal or party positioning.
We all know that politics is the art of the possible, but that too also has its limits when the stakes of the future of our homeland are high. We must also not play with what we signed and undertaken as an obligation, as a test of our political credibility in the eyes of the bh. public, peoples and citizens, with issues whose solution guarantees the stabilization of BiH, better interethnic relations, confidence in the system and institutions, development, investment and its European and Euro-Atlantic future.
In the manner that we agreed upon the solution for the City of Mostar, which brought that city the long-awaited governance and hope in a better tomorrow for all its citizens, we can, in the same and effective manner, live up to the expectations of the peoples and citizens we represent on the level of BiH by bravely, without the preventive search for alibi or culprits on either side, in this non-election year, which I personally recognize as the opportunity for the final archiving of this too important of a question for the rule of law – solve the most important chapter of the European path of BiH.
Given that it is not possible to understand, from your communication with the public, that we are undergoing substantive conversations in which we allegedly reached a high degree of agreement, allow me to help you in that by reminding you anew of the principles without which it is, as you very well know, pointless to discuss changes of the Election Law:
- Equality and legitimate representation of the constituent peoples are the bedrock of the functioning of BiH;
- These are the key constitutional principles that must be respected through changes of the Election Law in terms of the election of members of the Presidency of BiH and delegates to the House of Peoples of the PABiH;
- Three members of the Presidency, the Serb from RS, as well as the Croat and Bosniac from the FBiH, can be elected directly and indirectly (with inter-entity asymmetry), as we put forth in our proposal, which we delivered to you, as well as to the representatives of the administrations of the EU and the USA, with the possibility to stand for office of every citizen regardless of nationality;
- Direct election of the Croat and Bosniac member of the Presidency inevitably implies two constituencies in the FBiH, with clear majorities of the Croat and the Bosniac people (whether fixed or virtual);
- The House of Peoples of the PA BiH and the House of Peoples of the FBiH have clear constitutional jurisdictions and they cannot be changed by limited constitutional changes;
- The House of Peoples of the PA BiH retains the equal number of delegates as now, with the possibility to stand for office for other citizens under the caucuses of the constituent peoples in the House of Peoples;
- 17 representatives of Croats in the House of Peoples of the Parliament of FBiH should reflect the legitimate will of the Croat people in BiH (FBiH), as other peoples’ clubs should reflect the peoples’ legitimate will;
- The vital national interest is decided by majority of more than half of each caucus of constituent people in the House of Peoples.
Thus, HDZ BiH and all political parties gathered around the umbrella organization, the Croatian National Assembly firmly stand on these principles whose implementation enables the elimination of all forms of discrimination recognized in the decisions of the Constitutional Court of BiH and the European Court of Human Rights which pertain to electoral legislation.
We can achieve common goals, if you recognize them as such, solely if we approach the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and the Constitutional Court of BiH with equal responsibility, attention and energy and if we view them as specific but measurable, technical and politically solvable matters.
Therefore, it is very important that we agree on the fundamental premise that the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and the Constitutional Court of BiH are not mutually exclusive, ie that their implementation protects the principles of non-domination and equality in terms of respect for the democratic right of each of the constituent peoples for the election of political representatives, whilst simultaneously respecting the suffrage of every individual in BiH regardless of identity, ie the belonging to a specific collectivity.
Your insistence on non-recognition and the denouncing of the principle of constituitivity and legitimate democratic representation is a political stance directly opposite to the fact that you participate in conversations which seek to find solutions for their operationalization.
Allow me to once again also remind you of the recent letter and words of the U.S. State Secretary Mr. Blinken in which it is clearly stated that constitutional reforms in no case entail creating “Dayton 2”, but exclusively limited changes of the Constitution in the context of the implementation of the decisions of domestic and international courts for the purpose of the final elimination of the long-present discrimination in our bh. society.
Lastly, I firmly believe that it is time for all of us to practically demonstrate our democratic maturity and initiative for common work and that we, in the end, implement the signed Agreement, which will ensure further progress of our common homeland of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the wellbeing of all of its constituent peoples and all other citizens.
(FENA) A. B.
