New break in the House of Peoples, fate of the Law on Electoral Units still uncertain

(Patria) - After the Deputy Speaker of the House of Peoples of the FBiH Parliament continued the extraordinary session of the House without delegates from HDZ, the Speaker of the House Lidija Bradara appeared at the session. She accused the Bosniak Club that it is not proper to continue the session without them.

"The Croat Club is meeting, and that is the reason why we are not at the session," said Bradara, justifying her absence and the absence of other delegates from the House of Peoples.

"You called a 15-minute break, but you were gone for more than two hours. You should have said you needed more time, and we would have respected that," responded Predrag Kojović, a delegate from the Serb Club.

The fate of the Proposal for the Law on Electoral Units and the number of mandates of the Parliament of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is still uncertain. Speaker Bradara called a new half-hour break.

Earlier, the inclusion of this Law on the agenda was rejected, after the Deputy Speaker of the House of Peoples of the FBiH Parliament, Drago Puzigaća, assessed that the Proposal for the Law on Electoral Units is destructive to the vital national interest of the Croatian people. Today, delegates again tried to discuss this Law, but delegates from HDZ are obstructing the session.

The proposers of the Law on Electoral Units in FBiH are the parliamentary clubs in the House of Representatives of SDA, SBB, DF, SDP, and delegate in the House of Peoples Predrag Kojović. They claim that the law, if finally adopted, will remove blockades in the constitution of the federal House of Peoples. According to this Law, in the House of Peoples of the FBiH Parliament, each of the three constituent peoples in FBiH should have at least one delegate in the House of Peoples from each of the ten cantons. HDZ, on the other hand, believes that in that house, peoples should not have representatives from all cantons, but only from those where they are a majority, or where there is at least a significant number of that people. Other parties assess such an HDZ proposal as discriminatory.

Delegate Aner Žuljević said that the Law on Electoral Units should go to the Constitutional Court of BiH, which should decide whether this law threatens the vital national interest, but that HDZ is blocking that procedure.

Asked what will happen if the Law is ultimately not adopted, and whether it will be possible to implement the election results, Žuljević said that the implementation of the election results must ultimately be ensured by the OSCE, OHR, and the Central Election Commission.