Arapović: Local elections must be held in 2016, and then in 2018 with General Elections

Adis Arapović, project manager at the Center for Civil Initiatives (CCI), discusses amendments to the Election Law and the need for amendments to enter into real solutions, not into even bigger problems, reports the Patria News Agency.     

What are the most necessary technical, and what are the essential amendments to the Election Law of BiH?

-The essential amendment is that the Election Law should not be repaired, but a completely new one should be adopted, adapted to the present and future times, and to the lessons learned in the past 15 years of applying the existing one. The new Election Law should be drafted on different premises, so that it becomes a generator of democratization, not confrontation. By integrating basic electoral principles, such as equal and universal suffrage, transferring electoral sovereignty from abstract collectivities to the political citizen, which is the spirit of the 'Sejdić and Finci' ruling. The Election Law must be complementary to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which means that there can be no discrimination of the right to vote. The right to vote has so far been derived from ethnic and territorial affiliation of both voters and elected officials, which is contrary to the Constitution of BiH, as well as the Convention, because it derogates equal, both active and passive, right to vote.

This is an essential characteristic that must be corrected. The legitimacy of representing collectivities must be improved, wherever collectivities are represented. There must be no collision between representative and delegate representation; if citizens elect, then citizens are elected, if ethnic groups elect, then representatives of ethnic groups are elected. Some key technical corrections can and should be made: introducing electronic voting or at least counting, which would minimize electoral engineering and fraud, annul the number of invalid ballots, make trading of positions in polling stations meaningless, and election results would be known an hour after the polls close; specifying and shortening deadlines for the implementation of election results with the mandatory introduction of an extraordinary elections mechanism at each level individually, which would permanently thwart the enormous political irresponsibility visible after every election, partly derived from the Law itself.

Consideration should be given to potentially raising the electoral threshold to 4 percent, while simultaneously guaranteeing minimum quotas in entity parliaments for so-called minority constituent representation (Serbs in FBiH, and Bosniaks and Croats in RS), which would make parties more serious and parliaments more stable. Introduce two-round elections for mayors, members of the BiH Presidency, and the President of RS, because the simple majority model here has derogated the legitimacy of these extremely important positions. Ensure mechanisms for the dissolution and recall of every representative institution, including parliaments, presidencies, mayors, and municipal councils/assemblies, which is not currently the case.

One of the needs for amending the Election Law, but also the Constitution of BiH, is the implementation of the "Sejdić - Finci" ruling, which, after failed attempts at implementation, has been put on the back burner. Do you believe the ruling will continue to be a stumbling block on BiH's path to the EU?

- The ruling must be implemented by amending the Constitution and the Election Law of BiH. There is no way to revoke, forget, or bypass the ruling. The implementation of the ruling is in the ultimate interest of BiH and its citizens. The EU will soon decide whether to consider or accept BiH's application for candidate status before or after the implementation of this ruling. Even if BiH obtains candidate status, the ruling will inevitably be the first priority before the start of negotiations or through the opening of Chapter 23 - Judiciary and fundamental rights, or 24 - Justice and freedoms.

Therefore, the implementation of the ruling will very soon be back on the agenda, and its significance will be amplified by other related cases: Pilav, Zornić, etc. The circumstances in BiH have partially, but not crucially, changed, so the debate will again focus on this issue. If the ruling is implemented before 2017, it will be a sensational success, and anything after this year is dangerously late.

Within the framework of amending the Election Law, the possibility of merging local and general elections will also be considered. Is this a good solution for BiH? What are the arguments for and against this idea?

- Generally, I think it is good for local and general elections to be held in the same year, but with a minimum interval of 6 months. The alternating holding of elections every two years has proven to be a bad recipe, because political entities and public discourse practically do not emerge from election campaigns and political conflicts, and then there is not enough energy and time left for election winners to focus on their work, fulfilling promises, implementing reforms, and for election losers to regroup, improve, and emerge better from the opposition in the next elections. We have had 15 years of constant political cacophony, because no one had either the interest or the time to implement major reforms, as elections were their top priority. On the other hand, the Central Election Commission and the election administration do not have the capacity to conduct both types of elections on a single day or a single weekend, which is a technical, but crucial, element for their half-year distance.

More important than this is that it is bad for the democratization of society for general and local elections to be held on the same day, because the general political election campaign would completely overshadow the vital issues at the local level. The dirty populism and megalomaniacal demagoguery of general elections would obscure the race to solve small, but vital, local problems and meet the existential needs of citizens.

My firm stance is that local elections, in accordance with irrefutable constitutional provisions, must be held in 2016, and then again in 2018 together with the General Elections. This does not risk unconstitutional and illegitimate extension of the mandate of the current local authorities, and at the same time gains the consent of all actors for this important change in the electoral system, writes vijesti.ba