Amending Bosnia and Herzegovina’s electoral legislation is necessary to ensure the legitimate representation of the Croats on the state presidency and in the upper house of parliament as well as the functioning, stability and prosperity of the country, Croatian foreign minister Gordan Grlić Radman said on Saturday.
He reiterated that the Croats do not have a legitimate representative on the tripartite presidency, adding that “the fact that someone identifies himself as the Croat member of the presidency is not true,” referring to Željko Komšić who was elected by Bosniak votes.
“That’s why it is necessary to change the election law to ensure the functioning, stability and prosperity of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Grlić Radman said after a conference on the Posavina region of northern Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He said that in the early 2000s high representatives and other international stakeholders had used gradual reforms to change the substance and nature of the election law.
Because of those changes, the Croats do not have “what is guaranteed to them by the Dayton peace agreement, and that is legitimate representation on the three-member presidency and the House of Peoples, which are fundamental levels of government,” Grlić Radman said.
Speaking of the Croats in the Bosanska Posavina region, he said that they had borne witness to the same faith and the Croatian national identity for centuries, adding that Croatia would continue to support their projects both politically and financially.
At the start of the Bosnian war in 1992, Bosnian Serb forces expelled most of the Croats from the Posavina region. Today they constitute a majority in only three municipalities - Domaljevac-Šamac, Odžak and Orašje, which make up the predominantly Croat Posavina Canton within the Bosniak-Croat Federation entity.
Text: Hina/MFEA