Korać: The public reacted with reason to the behavior of the Central Election Commission

SARAJevo, (Patria) - Former member of the Central Election Commission Lidija Korać said that the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH appointed the members of the CEC, and that it has the possibility to demand their accountability.

Working materials, planned for a CEC session, were recently leaked from that body. These are proposals that Croats from some cantons in the FBiH, such as Sarajevo, Tuzla, and Bosanska-podrinje cantons, should not be elected to the House of Peoples of the FBiH Parliament in the future, and that Serbs or Bosniaks should not be elected to the same house from some cantons. Such a proposal was assessed as discriminatory by the public, writes Patria.

Analysts assess that HDZ BiH and Dragan Čović, with the help of the CEC, are trying to pass such an election law that will ensure that only Croats from West Herzegovina, where the main voting body of that party is located, sit in the House of Peoples, while thousands of Croats from Bosnia would be discriminated against.

Professor Kasim Trnka previously said that "The Election Commission should manage the election administration and implement what is in the law."

"I think the public reacted to the working material with good reason and rightfully. Not only political parties reacted, but the entire public. This is due to insufficient knowledge of constitutional and legal matters, insufficient analysis of the Constitutional Court's decision on the appeal of Božo Ljubić. Whether there are hidden intentions, I don't know, and it would be irresponsible to say so," Korać told N1.

The former CEC member believes that the Election Law of BiH should primarily be harmonized with the decision of the Constitutional Court of BiH.

The Constitutional Court of BiH previously deleted a sentence from the Election Law of BiH which stated "that in the House of Peoples of the FBiH, there must be one representative of the constituent people from each canton, if such a representative exists in the canton assembly." This was deleted after the ruling of the Constitutional Court of BiH.

"That is indeed possible. The issue should be returned to the professional sphere, although politics cannot be excluded. The decisions of the Constitutional Court are final and binding, whether we agree with them or not," Korać said on N1, adding that the BiH Constitution also states that BiH is a free, democratic state functioning on the basis of democratic elections.

"What we have are neither democratic nor free nor fair elections," Korać believes.

Korać points out that elections in BiH can be held in the current circumstances, but that the results for the executive government in the FBiH cannot be implemented if the issue of electing delegates to the House of Peoples of the FBiH is not resolved.

Elections will be possible to implement, she says, only if what the Constitutional Court said is followed, and the Venice Commission has also given its opinion.

Korać also believes that any solution requires a change to the Constitution of the FBiH.

"The Constitutional Court said that the House of Peoples is not the house of cantons, but the House of Peoples. That is the decision of the Constitutional Court. If we want to be a legal state, to follow the path towards the EU, we must respect what the highest instance in the country has told us. I don't care if it benefits HDZ, SDP, or any political option. The House of Peoples should be increased from 58 to a larger number, and through this increase, enable so-called positive discrimination for the peoples in those cantons where they do not meet the constitutional principle and the decision of the Constitutional Court to be elected based on the size of the people from the 1991 or 2013 census," Korać believes.