News in English     | 25.01.2022. 15:04 |

Komšić: Various political goals are achieved through the use of the term 'constituent'

FENA Hana Imamović, Photo:

SARAJEVO, January 25 (FENA) - Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Željko Komšić addressed the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe today on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Bosnia and Herzegovina's accession to the organization.

 

He briefly reviewed the main principles established during the founding of the Council of Europe in 1949, namely: protection of human rights, multiparty parliamentary democracy and rule of law, spreading awareness of European identity, conclusion of specific international treaties, securing continent's unity, finding solutions to social problems in Europe.

He also spoke about Bosnia and Herzegovina as a country with a tradition spanning for almost a thousand years, emphasizing that in different periods of time, BiH was never a country of divided or segmented society, nor was there any form of discrimination against its citizens.

“However, the declaration of independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina led to an aggressive reaction of neighboring countries, which in the period of war from 1992 to 1995 or aggression against my country, sought to obliterate any existence of Bosnia and Herzegovina and claim parts of its territory through war and conquest,” said Komšić.

The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina ended with the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace, which was initialed in Dayton and signed in Paris in 1995. It was signed by the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (whose legal successor is today's Serbia), or as international law clearly states - the peace agreement is usually signed by participants in the war.

“This removes any sort of a dilemma that there was a civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, because it was an interstate armed conflict, as established, among other things, by the International Court of Justice in The Hague in several of its judgments,” he added.

He reminded that the BiH Constitution is an integral part of that agreement, which, says Komšić, is not an expression of the democratic will of the citizens, but a document that is an integral part of a peace agreement. In that constitution, which we must all respect, many open questions and ambiguities remain, which left a lot of space for various arbitrary interpretations or interpretations, most often inspired by the particular interests of various political elites in BiH and neighboring countries.

“This Constitution has established a new political system in Bosnia and Herzegovina, that was to evolve according to democratic standards and values, such as those contained in the goals of the Council of Europe. Unfortunately, that never happened,” he pointed out.

In contrast, active ethnic policies in Bosnia and Herzegovina have sought, and continue to do so, to create an artificially divided and segmented society dominated by belonging to one of the ethnic communities, as the only valid statement for political action, Komšić underlined.

Their reason for such ambitions lies in that unfortunate term of "constituent" which is mentioned in the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the Constitution contains no legal elaboration or statement or determination of what that actually means.

That is why a new legal practice has emerged, one I consider highly dangerous, and that is to achieve various political goals through the use of the term "constituent", in which domestic political actors participate, with visible political support from neighbouring countries.

“In such, in my opinion, wrong political and legal practice, one's ethnicity becomes a conditio sine qua non for any form of political activity, which goes so far that one cannot even get a job if one is not of the appropriate ethnicity. Isn't that a visible form of systemic discrimination, which unfortunately exists in my country,” said Komšić.

According to him, "constituent" is the source of systemic discrimination in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has been established in five judgments of the European Court of Human Rights from Strasbourg listed chronologically hereafter: Sejdić-Finci, Zornić, Pilav, Šlaku and Pudarić.

These judgments have clearly established the existence of discrimination based on ethnicity and place of residence, and ordered the respondent, i.e. the State of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to make the necessary changes to its Constitution, from which all elements of discrimination must be removed. Unfortunately, that never happened.

“The current political system in Bosnia and Herzegovina, based on ethnicity, is creating three parallel totalitarian systems, based on the affiliation to one of the three ethnic communities, which they seeks to govern in an autocratic way,” Komšić believes.

In a nutshell, this means that in the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has 42 MPs, even just five of them can block any decision-making, because they come from one of the two entities.

He claims that this is still the case today when BiH, through obvious separatist activities, is in a political-hostage crisis, in the end of which a system of blockades, blackmail and keeping BiH in complete political uncertainty is hidden until the wishes and intentions of certain political leaders are fulfilled, and the reason for keeping BiH in a state of crisis is that it will not accept the judgments of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which established the crime of genocide.

To make matters worse, the reason for keeping Bosnia and Herzegovina in a state of crisis is because someone refuses to accept the judgments of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, that have established the crime of genocide had been committed. Just imagine now, what would disrespecting the decisions of any court mean in your countries? Undoubtedly, the criminal liability of those who fail to respect the judgments of the courts.

The situation is similar with the decision-making process in the upper house of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina called the House of Peoples, which consists of 15 indirectly appointed MPs, where two of them can block any decision-making process in such a way that even if all 42 MPs from the House of Representatives make a unanimous decision, it takes only two of them from the House of Peoples to bring it all down, due to necessary entity majority vote.

“Isn't this a clear indicator of inequality of MP votes in the two Houses of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the vote of one Member of the House of Peoples, appointed by political parties, has at least three times more value than that of an MP from the House of Representatives elected by the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” said Komšić.

Addressing the Council of Europe, he warned of abuses of the rights of "constituent peoples" to prevent BiH from becoming part of a civilized community of European parliamentary democracies and BiH from never becoming a member of the European Union.

Expressing other important issues that BiH is currently facing, Komšić called on the parliamentarians of the Council of Europe not to accept this type of conversation because it harms Bosnia and Herzegovina and its citizens.

He also presented his vision of a solution for Bosnia and Herzegovina in which it is necessary to achieve equality for every citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to create a society of equal opportunities that would eliminate all forms of discrimination associated with the phenomenon of "constituent peoples".

He also says that it is necessary to change the political system of Bosnia and Herzegovina from a limited or a restricted democracy and establish a system of full democracy, as set out in five judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, but also in accordance with the 2005 Venice Commission's Opinion, which has analytically, accurately, and legally specified all the changes that Bosnia and Herzegovina must make if it wants to be a part of modern democratic societies.

“Changes to the Constitution and the Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina must not be made without respecting the fundamental principles of liberal democracy, human rights and the rule of law, because everything else will lead my country to additional instability, and thus to the instability of the entire Western Balkans region,” concluded the Chairman of the Presidency of BiH Željko Komšić in his address to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. 

(FENA) A. B.

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