Kukić with Palmer and Eichhorst: Foreigners must not accept pens, blockades must stop

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - Professor Slavo Kukić yesterday held a meeting with international negotiators from the US and EU, Matthew Palmer and Angelina Eichhorst, regarding electoral reform, together with several other civil society representatives.

In an interview with Patria, Kukić revealed what he told Matthew Palmer and Angelina Eichhorst.

“I expressed the opinion that they should not be particularly nervous about the fact that criticism of them appears in the BiH public space, and that they should not take it personally, but rather as a consequence of the fact that BiH citizens, over the last 25 to 30 years, have very often turned their hopeful gazes towards world centers of power, primarily Washington and Brussels, and have remained disappointed. They are often wary of what representatives of these two administrations do here,” said Kukić.

Kukić emphasized that he told the officials not to think that if they solve the issue of the Election Law, they have solved the BiH Gordian knot.

“No normative solution is omnipotent if you have people, policies that respect nothing, neither the Constitution nor the laws. We have such policies here, and I think that both the EU and the US made a fundamental mistake in Dayton when they took as partners for a different BiH people who are responsible for a hundred thousand lives and who used that fact to continue the war from the 1990s by other means to achieve their war goals. They could have cut that off then; today the story is much more complex,” he said.

He further told them that the fundamental issue here is not the issue of the Election Law, but crime and corruption in which the political power brokers, who present themselves as defenders of national interests, are up to their necks.

“Everything else is a facade behind which that fact is attempted to be hidden, and these ethno-nationalists are not interested in any changes because only the status quo keeps them afloat and protects them from legal prosecution. If we start from the premise that they will never agree, I do not rule out the possibility that they have agreed this time, out of public sight, on how not to reach an agreement in Neum.

I told them that the Election Law is not the reason why people are leaving BiH, but that people are leaving because of the lack of hope that anything here could be different for them and their children,” he said.

He warned that changes to the BiH Constitution and the Election Law are necessary because the existing constitutional and legal solutions sanction the discrimination of a significant part of BiH citizens.

“Instead of resolving these existing discriminations, we now have on the negotiating table in Neum solutions that exacerbate this discrimination. I directed them to pay attention to the HDZ proposal because in those changes it is almost written that no one will be recognized as a member of the BiH Presidency unless it is Dragan Čović. In the case of direct election of Presidency members, it says that these elected members are confirmed in the House of Peoples by delegates from each national caucus. Translated into operational language, a person X could get 400,000 votes for the Croatian member, but if those five do not confirm him, those 400,000 votes of Croats are in vain.

We have on the table that Milorad Dodik says we are not an obstacle, make whatever reforms you want, we will accept them, but do not touch the RS because that is something sacred. The existing discriminations are something that must not be touched, and ultimately we have the policy of Serbia and Croatia which affirms their policy from the 1990s,” says Professor Kukić.

He clearly told the international officials that changes to the Election Law must apply to the entire country.

“The stance 'you agree in the FBiH, don't touch the RS' cannot be tolerated. The RS cannot be left out because all these discriminations against citizens extend to the entire country, and my impression is that they too are emphasizing the FBiH, and that is falling into a matrix that is on the wrong path. Changes can be made in the way the Venice Commission proposes, that there are two electoral units, one is the RS and the other is the FBiH, without an ethnic prefix. My opinion is that for those three members to have the legitimacy of all citizens, the entire BiH would have to be one electoral unit when it comes to the House of Peoples and the Presidency,” he said.

Kukić commented on the overall environment in which the Election Law is being discussed.

“At this moment, it is truly important to preserve the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country because they are threatened by everything that the NSRS and Milorad Dodik do on a daily basis. Reforms of that type, which are important, if carried out overnight, can produce solutions that will tomorrow, for the next 20 years, be a millstone around the necks of the citizens of this country and further encourage their departure from the country.

First, teeth must be shown regarding attacks on sovereignty and territorial integrity. They will do a great job if they force the BiH nationalist bullies to make technical corrections to the Election Law that will prevent election theft. And after the elections, because these are not the first elections under this law, we should sit down in peace and go into detail about changes, but changes that will respect both European values and the judgments of the court in Strasbourg, and in which every person in this country will feel equal to other people. Care must be taken of the fact that BiH is a multi-national country, but not in the way Čović and Dodik propose,” he emphasized.

Professor Kukić supported the stance of the SDP, DF, and Our Party not to participate in the negotiations in Neum.

“There should be no talk about reforming anything, legal foundations, with those who attack this country, its sovereignty and territorial integrity. There should be no talk with people who block this country in various ways in order to force different solutions to create pens that give them immunity from legal prosecution, as Dragan Čović and his interest group are blocking it. That commitment is absolutely correct and shows the world that in this country, alongside those who would return it to the environment of tribal communities, there are also people, policies, and political concepts that are on a European footing. If those who come to BiH are reluctant to hear that, if they would rather put them all in one pen so that, despite what is happening here, something can be discussed there, if they are inclined to that, then they too should be thanked,” concluded Kukić.