DF: We continue the decade-long fight for equal rights for citizens and a civic BiH

(Patria) - The Democratic Front (DF) issued a statement today after the European Court of Human Rights delivered a judgment on Slaven Kovačević's appeal, with a message that this party continues its decade-long fight for equal rights for citizens and a civic BiH.

"The judgment of the European Court of Human Rights on Slaven Kovačević's appeal, which states that legitimate representation is discriminatory, that members of the Presidency of BiH must be elected from the entire territory of the country, not from entities, that delegates in the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH must be elected from the territory of the entire country, that the Presidency of BiH should be one electoral unit, that the House of Peoples of the PA BiH should be one electoral unit without entities, is a strong incentive for what DF has been advocating for years.

The judgment on Kovačević's appeal is the most important to date concerning Bosnia and Herzegovina. The judgment, in a way, symbolizes the decade-long fight for equal rights for the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The history of this struggle has its legal and political context.

In a legal sense, the fight for equal rights for the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in line with the judgment on Slaven Kovačević's appeal, began with the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the Zornić case.

The aforementioned judgment shook the very foundations of ethnic discrimination, and the European Court of Human Rights, in the same judgment, ordered the rejection of the ethnic principle of so-called constituent peoples, because, as stated in the judgment, it had to be accepted due to the commission of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

The judgment of the European Court of Human Rights on Slaven Kovačević's appeal is a kind of continuation of the judgment in the Zornić case.

In a political sense, the fight for equal rights for peoples, in line with the conclusions from the judgments in the Kovačević, Zornić, and other related cases, began with the resolute rejection by the member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Željko Komšić (then a member of the SDP), of the political agreement between the SDP and the HDZ on the unequal value of a vote, in 2013.

The rejection of the unequal value of a vote and the fight for equal rights for citizens was one of the main motives for Željko Komšić's departure from the SDP and the formation of the Democratic Front ten years ago.

With the formation of the Democratic Front, the legal and political fight for equal rights for the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina continued. On this occasion, we briefly recall that in 2014, the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina accepted the appeal of the DF president concerning the election of the president and vice-president of the entity.

Two years later, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of Ilijaz Pilav (DF representative in the KS Assembly) based on Pilav's request, as he did not have the opportunity to run for member of the BiH Presidency as a Bosniak from Republika Srpska.

The Democratic Front, led by President Komšić, after the judgment of the Constitutional Court of BiH on Božo Ljubić's appeal, almost alone on the political scene of BiH, warned of the danger of political interpretations of this judgment and the destructiveness of the invented term 'legitimate representation of peoples', which has now been finally delegitimized by the judgment in the Kovačević case.

Following this, during years of discussions on amendments to the Election Law and the Constitution of BiH, despite facing numerous attacks and challenges due to difficult and unpopular decisions, the Democratic Front consistently insisted on the implementation of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights and the debunking of legally unfounded constructions about so-called legitimate representation of peoples.

Unlike other civic parties, the Democratic Front advocated and continues to advocate for full democracy and overcoming the principle of constituent peoples, based on European judgments.

Therefore, unlike other 'civic' parties that are currently participating in the 'trojka' political project, the imposition of measures by the High Representative, contrary to the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, which strengthened the ethnic rather than the civic concept, was and remains completely unacceptable to the Democratic Front.

However, as we promised citizens after the aforementioned impositions, the Democratic Front has continued its legal and political fight for equal rights for the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina and for the idea of a civic state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The judgment on Slaven Kovačević's appeal is just one manifestation of this policy, and new judgments on appeals by DF officials and the party itself can be expected in the future.

Considering that we have ten years of legal and political struggle for equal rights for the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina behind us, we call on all interested actors to join this struggle, because the possibility of implementing the judgments, as well as the possibility of building a civic state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, depends on the relationship of political forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the next ten years," the DF stated.