Knežević in Investigation of the Week: I retired early due to the Conclusion of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska and the change of rules in the Constitutional Court of BiH

Zlatko Knežević, former judge of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was one of the guests of our 'Investigation of the Week' show on Hayat TV this week.

Knežević spoke about the work of the Constitutional Court as the highest judicial instance in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

"I was the president of the Constitutional Court in the most difficult situation, at that time the Constitutional Court had 128 decisions, formed a judicial forum, discussed the most important issues, and only now have I realized that I was right to leave. From an institution that was a role model in Europe, it was 3rd or 4th in Europe in terms of quality, it has been reduced to an institution that at this moment does not know where it stands. Besides the three constituent peoples, we also have a fourth, and that is the international community. There are many interests there, perhaps we should ask ourselves who benefits from the Constitutional Court not functioning. The eternal culprit is the leadership of RS, rightly or wrongly, but the eternal culprit. The key political parties of the other two peoples are not interested in the functioning of the Constitutional Court, and then there is our dear 'brother from the same mother' from the international community. After the infamous conclusion to leave the Constitutional Court, that is, to resign, there were two deputies who were against everything proposed, and the rest were either 'for' or 'abstained'," he stated.

Knežević, he says, retired seven years earlier. We remind you that the National Assembly of Republika Srpska elects two judges of the Constitutional Court of BiH, the House of Representatives elects four judges of the Constitutional Court, and three judges are foreigners. At this moment, there are no judges from RS. As he stated, he retired due to political pressure, but also due to the deletion of Article 39 of the Rules of the Constitutional Court.

"Article 39 at that time stated that a plenary session could not be held if three judges out of the four elected by the BiH Parliament or one judge elected by the National Assembly of Republika Srpska were not present. The quorum for a plenary session is five. This is a mechanism that was used and it never happened, it was deleted contrary to that rule. The rules state that a plenary session cannot be held without a judge from RS. I was absent from that session, I had a travel order. I was in Kyrgyzstan, I spoke with the president Valerija and she said she would convene a session with an agenda, and the agenda was 'state of emergency in the Constitutional Court due to the non-election of judges'. At that time, two were missing. I said that I could not then, I could not participate online. I called our boss during the night and said I couldn't connect. Only when I managed to connect did I see that a decision on changing the rules had been made, and then the persuasion started that I left due to political pressure, not due to the change of rules. I left due to the change of rules and due to political pressure. I appeared at the plenary session 12 days later and asked to vote according to the rules, but it was refused to discuss it. It essentially changed serious things and caused negative consequences in BiH. Citizens of BiH are in the hands of foreigners' decision-making. I don't understand why they rushed, why they couldn't wait 12 days to do it legally. There will be more foreigners in the Constitutional Court than domestic judges," he explained.

He also spoke about the roles of foreign judges in the Constitutional Court.

"There are foreigners who think in terms of appeals, there are judges who have their own stance, they prepare for sessions. It happened that a political document was missing, and the next day at the session, a foreign judge brought that document, because, after all, she had met with someone from the international community in the morning, it happened," he explained.