Lawyer Pećanin requested reaction from the Bar Association of FBiH

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - Lawyer Senad Pećanin wrote to the Management Board of the Bar Association of FBiH with a proposal to adopt a decision on the request that all members of the HJPC resign, announcing that lawyers will go on strike if the demands are not met. Pećanin requested that his proposal be urgently considered and adopted.

We are transmitting the letter in its entirety:

"Dear colleagues,

I am addressing you with a proposal that the Management Board of the Bar Association of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in accordance with Article 64 of the Statute of the Bar Association of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, urgently adopt a decision requesting the resignation of the president and all members of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina, announcing the adoption of a decision to go on strike by all members of the Bar Association of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina until the demands are met, with an invitation to the Bar Association of Republika Srpska to adopt the same decision.

Dear colleagues, I received the information with regret that to date, no body of our association has commented, despite publicly available information, on the latest "potkivanje" (bribery) affair, regarding the work of the president of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the members who unanimously supported him. I am submitting the proposal in the conviction that we must not remain silent observers of the hammering of another nail into the coffin in which the lawful work of judicial bodies and institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been buried for years.

Dear colleagues, unlike the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the wider international public, we are not helpless in our attempts to save the remaining crumbs of trust in the lawful functioning of prosecutor's offices and courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Law on Advocacy of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Statute of the Bar Association of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and our code of ethics provide us with sufficient opportunities to make a decisive and determining contribution to preventing the complete collapse of the lawful work of judicial bodies and institutions, as the foundation of every legal state and democratic society. Honorable and moral professionals, whom I wish to believe constitute the vast majority among prosecutors, judges, and lawyers in Bosnia and Herzegovina, no longer have the right to remain silent and turn a blind eye to the misdeeds of the "bribed" who have eroded public trust in the work of the judiciary. We, lawyers, especially do not have this right, given our rich, daily experience of the impossibility of realizing and protecting the rights of our clients precisely because of the state into which our judiciary has been brought."