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BRUSSELS, March 15 (FENA) - Speaker of the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina Dragan Čović addressed members of the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee today, condemning Russia's aggression against Ukraine and thus unequivocally joining the European Union.
He says that BiH still has a long way to go before gaining candidate status. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a multinational state, which can be functional only if we have full equality of all three constituent peoples, Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs, and all other citizens, he underlined.
“Demographic domination of one people cannot diminsh the principle of equality of constituent peoples on which we all agreed upon to achieve peace. Therefore, parity between the three constituent peoples must reflect in all institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Čović.
He said that it is necessary to ensure equality and parity between the three constituent peoples as per the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina that is, unfortunately, being increasingly violated in the name of domination of the demographically more numerous people – especially in the Federation. of BiH, and he considers that this anomaly must be abolished.
“If we succeed in that, we will eliminate violations of human rights, negative domination, but also the actions of malignant actors, and ensure stability and the continuation of the path of Bosnia and Herzegovina towards membership in the European Union and NATO,” Čović stated.
He stated that attempts of conducting retrograde agendas, but also the successes of political domination of representatives of one people over another have led to to the peak of mistrust between political representatives of the three constituent peoples, which caused a halt in the implementation of key reforms in the country.
It is unacceptable that all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, regardless of their national declaration, cannot stand for office for certain political functions in elections. It is also unacceptable that Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, although a constituent people and in great part citizens of the European Union, do not feel safe.
“The political rights of Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina are neither recognized nor equal to the political rights of the two other peoples. I emphasize that their basic political and civic rights – as well as their inalienable right to elect legitimate political representatives – are grossly violated due to the desire for dominance of Bosniaks, as representatives of the demographically more numerous constituent people,” he said.
Bosnia and Herzegovina must harmonize its electoral legislation with the fundamental constitutional principles and norms deriving from the European Convention on Human Rights. The Croat negotiation side demonstrates a strong commitment to reaching compromise solutions so that our country would make a civilizational step forward and prove anew that it belongs to the family of the European Union.
''In the times ahead of us, we are aware that the one-sided interventions of certain actors of the international community sometimes benefited only one of the three sides. Such policies achieved illusory success. They did not advance relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina but, rather, halted processes that would have built a strong and independent democratic society and country,'' Dragan Čović said.
To urgently come out of this gap and the uncertainty we find ourselves in, as a key precondition, the Election Law must be immediately changed without further ado. This would significantly relax relations between Bosniacs and Croats in the Federation of BiH and stabilize the situation in the entire country – and, which is most important, enable for the formal and legal preconditions for the holding of the General Elections to be met, Čović concluded in an address to the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee.
(FENA) A. B.
