Cero: SDA must not resolve the issue of Mostar without taking into account the verdict against Prlić and others

It is clear that HDZ BiH (or the Croatian National Assembly as the umbrella political institution of Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina) must make a stronger step forward in the offer for the „healing“ of Mostar. This is warned in an interview for the news agency Patria by political analyst Muharem Cero.

The last elections in Mostar were not held because the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina ruled that the basic human rights of Mostar residents had been violated. About 1,000 Mostar residents cannot exercise their right to vote properly. And, as things stand now, it is unlikely that local elections, which are supposed to be held in a few months, will take place in Mostar.

The positions of SDA and HDZ BiH are still not aligned when it comes to amendments to the Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the part concerning elections in Mostar. SDA proposes a single City of Mostar, which would consist of two municipalities, one with a majority Bosniak population and the other with a majority Croatian population.

SDA's proposal is not acceptable to HDZ BiH. They calculate that there are more Croats in Mostar. They demand elections under the system of „one man, one vote“, which would secure their dominance in the City. In a word, both political parties are fighting for control over the territory.

Asked by Cero what exactly he means by a stronger step forward by the Croatian side in the case of Mostar, he says that when amending the Election Law of BiH, which should enable changes to the Statute of the City of Mostar, only the ruling of the Constitutional Court of BiH, which essentially defines only the value of a voter's vote when voting for the City Council of Mostar, cannot be on the table.

-HDZ BiH must be ready to put on the table also the assumptions based on the verdict of the Hague Court in the case of Prlić and others. Although this verdict is not yet final, it is quite predictable and evident on the ground – said Cero.

Simplified, says Cero, in order for justice to be satisfied in Mostar, everything that arose from the joint criminal enterprise and for which there is a first-instance verdict of the Hague Tribunal must first disappear.

Cero recalls that as a consequence of the joint criminal enterprise in Mostar, entire new administrative structures were created in the city (schools, telecom, electric power company and other public companies). Moreover, he says, this is also the case throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina.

-These parallelisms must disappear, new administrative mechanisms must be created that are acceptable to the victims of the joint criminal enterprise – says Cero.

-Whoever has read the so-called imposed Ešdaun Statute for Mostar more carefully can see that it already contained hints of a solution for Mostar, based on the principle of removing the consequences of the joint criminal enterprise. One of the mechanisms for removing the consequences of the JCE is the value of the vote. Because the demographic destruction in Mostar occurred precisely because of the JCE. This was also established by the first-instance verdict of the Hague Court in the case of Prlić and others – says Cero.

He adds that the JCE does not only apply to Bosniaks, but much more drastically to citizens of Mostar of Serbian nationality. This can be seen by looking at the data from the 1991 census.

-I claim that High Representative Ešdaun, when imposing the amended Statute of Mostar, had in mind the demographic consequences of the JCE – says Cero.

He explains that the problem is that Ešdaun's Statute of Mostar was never implemented.

-If it had been implemented, the consequences of the JCE would have been remedied – says Cero.

He also notes that the final verdict for the joint criminal enterprise in the case of Prlić and others was supposed to be read in the summer of 2017, but under very strange circumstances it was postponed to 2019.

-If that verdict had been rendered before the rulings of the Constitutional Court of BiH in the case of elections in Mostar, it would have been expected that the Constitutional Court of BiH itself would have taken into account the facts of the JCE when assessing the constitutionality of the Statute of the City of Mostar.

I hope that the leader of the HNS, Čović, will muster the strength and political wisdom to make a moral-political step forward. As for the Bosniak side, i.e., SDA and Bakir Izetbegović, the lower threshold of acceptability for a solution for Mostar must be taking into account the verdict on the joint criminal enterprise. Anything else would not be a true unification of Mostar, warns Cero, writes Patria.