Komšić at PACE: Constituent Peoples and Houses of Peoples are tools for corruption and unequal votes

(Patria) - Željko Komšić, Chairman of the Presidency, addressed the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, presenting his address through the specific prism of those fundamental values of the Council of Europe, which he personally and continuously advocates for in his work, and which he is sure the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina also want to see embedded in the political and social system of our country.

Patria conveys Komšić's speech in its entirety.

"Therefore, at the very beginning of my address, I will briefly touch upon the main principles established at the founding of the Council of Europe in 1949, which are: the protection of human rights, multi-party parliamentary democracy and the rule of law, the dissemination of knowledge about European identity, the conclusion of specific international treaties, ensuring the unity of the continent, and seeking solutions to social problems in Europe.

The reason for such goals after the end of World War II is understandable. In a Europe devastated by war, many countries were in the process of transition towards the fundamental principles of liberal democracy, which was not an easy task at that time.

The context of that time, especially the geopolitical one, led to the creation of two poles, distinctly ideological in nature, one oriented towards liberal democracy and a market economy, and the other towards communist doctrine and a centralized economy. In other words, a bipolar world order was created at the global level, which lasted for almost five decades, until the fall of the Berlin Wall, when a whole series of transitional processes began in various European countries.

Today, however, we have completely different geopolitical relations in the world, based on a multi-polar world order and the development of interests of global powers, which are produced and manifested in various countries around the world. In such circumstances, there is a number of countries that have not completed their transitional processes towards the principles of liberal democracy and a market economy, which makes them very "easy prey" for the various geopolitical interests of major players.

My country, Bosnia and Herzegovina, is a country with a tradition of almost a thousand years, which in different periods had its own different internal structures. For a period, Bosnia was a kingdom, which lasted for several centuries and was, at that time, the largest country in this region by its territory. After that, we also had the conquest of Bosnia and Herzegovina by various empires and states, which brought their culture, customs, and religion, integrating them into the social system of my country. Nevertheless, Bosnia and Herzegovina survived and outlived such empires and states.

During World War II, the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina massively joined the anti-fascist movement, participating on the side of those forces fighting against fascism and Nazism. At the same time, during World War II, the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina made the decision to restore our statehood and join the then Yugoslavia, in a community with other then-republics. Bosnia and Herzegovina's participation in the former Yugoslavia lasted until March 1992, when citizens, through their vote in a referendum, decided that Bosnia and Herzegovina should be a sovereign and independent state. In the same year, the Constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was adopted as a democratic expression of its citizens, which already contained the fundamental principles of liberal democracy and a market economy, even identical principles to those embedded in the foundations of the Council of Europe. In May 1992, Bosnia and Herzegovina was admitted to membership in the United Nations, thus achieving the status of a subject of international law.

In these enumerated periods, Bosnia and Herzegovina was never a country with a divided or segmented society, nor did any form of discrimination against its citizens exist.

However, the declaration of independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina led to an aggressive reaction from neighboring countries, which, during the war from 1992 to 1995, or aggression against my country, sought to nullify any existence of Bosnia and Herzegovina and annex parts of its territory through their wartime and conquest activities.

Such wartime activities led to unprecedented horrors, which escalated to the commission of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.

All these elements I have mentioned were established in its judgments by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague. These judgments established the existence of multiple joint criminal enterprises, in which individuals and groups from Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as from neighboring countries, participated, with the aim of establishing ethnically clean territories, in order to annex such cleansed territories to those neighboring countries.

I am stating all this because, in the second part of my address, I will clearly point out that such policies are present today in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but that they have replaced the method of wartime conquest with political and diplomatic means, i.e., they continue to strive to achieve their wartime goals, but in peacetime conditions.

The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina ended with the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace, initialed in Dayton and signed in Paris in 1995. It was signed by the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (whose legal successor is today's Serbia), or as international law clearly states - a peace agreement is usually signed by the participants in the war.

This removes any doubt that it was a civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as it was an interstate armed conflict, as established, among other things, by the International Court of Justice in The Hague in several of its judgments.

An integral part of that agreement, which we all colloquially call the Dayton Agreement, is also the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as its Annex 4. Therefore, it is clearly an imposed constitution, not an expression of the democratic will of the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but a document that is an integral part of a peace agreement. It defines Bosnia and Herzegovina as a country with two entities and one district, with the existence of different ethnic communities.

In that constitution, which we must all respect, many open questions and ambiguities remain, which has left ample room for various arbitrary interpretations or explanations, most often inspired by the particular interests of different political elites, both in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in neighboring countries.

That constitution established a new political system in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was supposed to evolve towards democratic standards and values, such as those contained in the goals of the Council of Europe. Unfortunately, this has never happened.

On the contrary, active ethnic policies in Bosnia and Herzegovina have sought, and still seek today, to create an artificially divided and segmented society in which belonging to an ethnic community dominates as the only valid expression for political action. Although the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms is an integral part of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, I must emphasize here that, unfortunately, it is implemented too little in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The reason for such ambitions lies in the unfortunate term "constituent peoples," which is mentioned in the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina but is not legally elaborated anywhere, nor is it stated or determined what it actually means.

Therefore, a new legal practice has emerged, which I consider very dangerous, where various political goals are achieved through the use of the term "constituent peoples," in which domestic political actors participate, with visible political support from neighboring countries. In such a political and legal practice, which I believe is wrong, one's ethnic affiliation becomes a conditio sine qua non for any form of political action, going so far that one cannot even get a job if one is not of the appropriate ethnic affiliation. Isn't that a visible form of systemic discrimination that unfortunately exists in my country?

As a legal expert, I can freely say here and now that "constituent peoples" is actually the source of systemic discrimination in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as established in five judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which I wish to present to you chronologically: Sejdić-Finci, Zornić, Pilav, Šljaka, and Pudarić. These judgments clearly established the existence of discrimination based on ethnic affiliation and place of residence, and ordered the defendant, i.e., the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to make the necessary changes to its constitution, from which all elements of discrimination must be removed. Unfortunately, nothing like that has ever happened.

If we look at the ruling in the Sejdić-Finci case, we will see how discrimination based on ethnicity is a derivative that arises from racial discrimination. Do we need something like that in present-day Europe and in a modern liberal democratic order? That is a question for all of us, not just for Bosnia and Herzegovina?

I am completely sure that we will all agree that we do not need such legal or even constitutional frameworks and that we must all make efforts to combat all forms of discrimination.

Particularly interesting is the part of the Zornić ruling, which clearly states that Bosnia and Herzegovina does not have full democracy, but a limited or restricted democracy through the distribution of political power among ethnic communities, which are called "constituent peoples" in my country. This lack of full democracy is actually in complete contradiction with one of the fundamental goals of the Council of Europe.

Therefore, the Zornić ruling orders Bosnia and Herzegovina to amend its constitution to enable the realization of full democracy in which the necessary equality of every citizen of my country will exist. This is a very important issue.

How else can we establish the rule of law or organize a legal state if all citizens of any country, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, are not equal before the law, without exception?

How can we achieve liberal democracy, at the heart of which is the struggle for equality against all forms of inequality, if we know that Bosnia and Herzegovina politically forces the imposition of a system of inequality?

Then it is certainly not liberal democracy, which I consider unacceptable.

It is clear that the current political system in Bosnia and Herzegovina, based on ethnic affiliation, creates three parallel totalitarian systems, based on belonging to one of the three ethnic communities, which are sought to be ruled autocratically.

In such a system, through belonging to an ethnic community, as an expression of the exclusivity of ethnic policies, the aim is actually to gain control over resources, jobs, tenders, public procurement, all kinds of privileges, profits, or benefits, thereby visibly creating an environment for corruption of immeasurable proportions.

Twenty-six years after the signing of the Dayton Agreement, instead of the political system of Bosnia and Herzegovina evolving towards one based on democracy and the rule of law, my country is moving in a regressive direction, where, through regression or distancing from democracy, it seeks to maintain and even strengthen an ethnic political system that generates corruption in all pores of society, through the use of ethnic policies and the manipulation of fear among members of different ethnic communities.

Therefore, it is important to say that ethnic policies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, when they exhaust all other tools to control their ethnic community, resort to emotions and empathy within their communities. This is achieved by generating fear, which ultimately forms a system conducive to corruption and the denial of the rule of law. I believe we share the same opinion: such a political system has no place in modern Europe.

Allow me, on this occasion, to briefly address the different ideas of those who seek to maintain the principle of inequality in Bosnia and Herzegovina, who propose the introduction of consociational democracy, by supposedly copying the political systems of Belgium, Switzerland, Northern Ireland, or South Tyrol. There are at least two problems here. First, consociational democracy is not the same as liberal democracy, nor does it exist in the mentioned countries or parts of other countries in the way consociational democracy is generally conceived.

Such countries or parts of countries have a completely different historical context from Bosnia and Herzegovina for their political systems to be used in my country.

The second problem is that the eventual introduction of consociational democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina would certainly lead to new proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights, because such a political model is based on inequality and the negation of the fundamental principles of liberal democracy, regardless of whether it contains elements of proportional representation as its principle. Using such, long-outdated political models would certainly be a step backward for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Such policies go so far as to deny the existence of the Bosnian nation, a country that has existed for almost a thousand years, instead wanting to portray every expression of nationality through ethnic issues. I want to say today that I am ethnically a Croat and nationally a Bosnian and Herzegovinian, because nationality is an expression of belonging to one's own country. Neighboring countries deny the Bosnian nation, seeking to exploit ethnic identities in my country for their own benefit, creating an environment where we, Bosnians and Herzegovinians, should ask them for consent to be Bosnians and Herzegovinians by national affiliation. This is absolutely unacceptable and in complete contradiction with the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

On the other hand, when we look at the decision-making system, today in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we have a situation where the existence of any majority in the lower house of parliament, or in directly elected lower houses of legislative bodies, is completely nullified through a new political tool called "entity voting."

In short, this means that in the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, or the lower house, which has 42 representatives, at least 5 of them can block any decision because they come from one of the two entities. Is such a thing an expression of liberal democracy? Of course not, because it is evident that a political minority can block the adoption of any decision to the detriment of the political majority, until that minority is appeased. We have such a situation today in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which, through obvious separatist activities, is held in a political hostage crisis, at the end of which lies a system of blockades, blackmail, and holding Bosnia and Herzegovina in complete political uncertainty until the wishes and intentions of certain political leaders are fulfilled.

Isn't that an expression of complete autocracy and a lack of fundamental democratic principles?

And to make matters worse, the reason for holding Bosnia and Herzegovina in a state of crisis lies in the fact that someone does not want to accept the judgments of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which established the crime of genocide. Imagine, on this occasion, what the non-compliance with the decisions of any court would mean in your countries? Undoubtedly, criminal responsibility for those who do not respect court judgments.

The situation is similar with decision-making in the upper house of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, called the House of Peoples, which consists of 15 indirectly delegated deputies appointed by political parties, where only 2 of them can block any decision-making, in such a way that all 42 deputies from the House of Representatives can unanimously make a decision, and only the two of them from the House of Peoples can overturn it all, because an appropriate entity majority is required.

Isn't that a clear indication of the unequal vote of deputies in the two houses of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the vote of one deputy from the House of Peoples, appointed by political parties, has at least three times the value of a delegate from the House of Representatives, elected by the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina?

This is used today as a political tool to prevent the normal functioning of the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with complete disregard for fundamental democratic principles, and I consider this unacceptable. For these reasons, there is also the latest appeal to the European Court of Human Rights concerning the inequality of votes in the two legislative houses in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Unfortunately, the application of the concept of "constituent peoples" and ethnic voting in the daily political decision-making in the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina for 26 years has not served to protect the rights of "constituent peoples" but to prevent Bosnia and Herzegovina from stabilizing and progressing.

Since 2008, when BiH signed the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the European Union, parties supporting the ethnically based decision-making system have used ethnic quotas in decision-making in executive and legislative bodies to prevent the adoption of European standards. Laws related to the adoption of the European Union acquis communautaire fail precisely in the Houses of Peoples through ethnic voting, or in the House of Representatives through entity voting in BiH.

This regularly happens even though laws from the European Union acquis do not touch upon ethnic identity, culture, tradition, language, and education as values that the Houses of Peoples should protect.

For this reason, dozens of laws from the European agenda are pending in the parliamentary procedure, which is why we cannot fill the Constitutional Court of the Federation of BiH, why there are no appointments of governing bodies of many independent law enforcement agencies, why we are losing funds from European funds. And much more to the detriment of all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, all under the guise of fighting for the legitimate ethnic interests of "constituent peoples." This is also unacceptable.

Therefore, this is about the abuse of the rights of "constituent peoples" to prevent Bosnia and Herzegovina from becoming part of the civilized community of European parliamentary democracies and from ever becoming a member of the European Union. Such policies intend to turn my country into a territory over which foreign regimes will have influence, either economically or by creating new "Transnistrias" in the Western Balkans from a part of my country.

I want to remind you that the European Commission has precisely legally identified in its "Opinion" from 2019 everything that my country needs to improve in order to continue its long journey towards candidate status.

At that moment, political actors advocating for the disappearance of Bosnia and Herzegovina decided to stop all processes and take 3.5 million people back to 1995 with talk of the rights of "constituent peoples," the return of entity competencies, and finally, anti-civilizational resistance to punishing the denial of genocide and war crimes that have already been adjudicated.

Today, when there is talk in Bosnia and Herzegovina about the need for amendments to the Constitution and the Election Law, with the aim of implementing five judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, we again see the emergence of those political forces that have no intention of implementing these judgments, but through political manipulation, they seek to create a new constitutional arrangement and electoral system with deeper discrimination that would be hidden behind the unequal value of citizens' votes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Unfortunately, neighboring countries are directly involved in this, whose goal is very clear - to achieve all their wartime objectives using political and diplomatic means in peacetime conditions.

Their intention is reflected in two aspects. First, through amendments to the Constitution and Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina, they aim to create a system in which these neighboring countries will have a "golden share" or the decisive word in making all decisions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and thus complete control over my country. You will easily recognize such intentions every time they talk about the "constituent peoples" or in the phrase that they will accept "whatever the three ethnic communities agree upon."

Regardless of the fact that they are undermining the foundations of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, they often do so in diplomatic discussions, even with you, with which, I believe, you are also occasionally confronted.

Second, when they see that something like that cannot succeed, they resort to their allies in Bosnia and Herzegovina who, on behalf of those neighboring countries, block the work of Bosnia and Herzegovina's institutions, trying to create the illusion that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a dysfunctional state.

Furthermore, in addition to interfering in the political system of my country, neighboring countries, through their political satellites in Bosnia and Herzegovina, seek to have complete control over the natural and all other resources of my country. How else can we explain the political intentions of neighboring countries not to establish a border with Bosnia and Herzegovina through an international border agreement, both on land and at sea, all with the aim of them having the ability to manage the natural resources of Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Therefore, I take this opportunity to ask you all not to accept such diplomatic discussions, as they harm Bosnia and Herzegovina and its citizens.

Finally, I would like to take the opportunity to point out my vision for a solution for Bosnia and Herzegovina. First, I believe, and I cannot give up on this, that it is necessary to achieve equality for every citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to create a society of equal opportunities.

This would eliminate all forms of discrimination brought about by the phenomenon of "constituent peoples," which I want to emphasize again, is a principle or tool for creating an environment of immeasurable and continuous corruption or a society where not the best among us succeed, but those who are suitable or connected by family and nepotism.

A system dominated by systemic corruption is not acceptable for any modern society, including Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Second, it is necessary to amend the political system of Bosnia and Herzegovina in such a way that we establish a system of full democracy from a limited or restricted democracy, as established in five judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, but also in accordance with the Opinion of the Venice Commission from 2005, which analytically accurately and legally precisely indicated all the changes that Bosnia and Herzegovina must make if it wants to be part of modern democratic societies.

Therefore, I want to take this opportunity to ask you all to familiarize yourselves with the Opinion of the Venice Commission on Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2005, as it is very important that we accept its opinion as assistance from the Council of Europe to countries in transition.

Finally, amendments to the Constitution and Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot be made if these amendments do not respect the fundamental principles of liberal democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, because anything else will lead my country to further instability, and thus to the instability of the entire Western Balkan region. We all know well that the citizen, the individual, is the bearer of their country's sovereignty, which must also apply in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I take this opportunity to ask you all not to agree to any diplomatic and political discussions that aim to harm Bosnia and Herzegovina, and you will easily recognize such discussions - they will be outside the fundamental principles of the Council of Europe," Komšić stated.