Parliamentarians, Pro-Bosnians, Populists, Leftists, Rightists, Liberals, and Others, It's Your Turn...

By Muharem CERO

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The ongoing constitutional crisis in BiH, provoked by the amendments to the Criminal Code banning the denial of genocide and glorification of war crimes, is proceeding with its now clearly discernible agenda of achieving desired goals.

The creators of the crisis have merely used the certainly desirable and expected amendments to the Criminal Code to achieve their goals. The real objectives are to extort and blackmail through blockades in order to resolve the status of all state property (public assets and those from succession) in a manner projected by the concept of a composite state.

It is unknown how long the conversation between the President of the Constitutional Court of BiH, Mate Tadić, and the High Representative, Christian Schmidt, lasted, but it was certainly not long enough for Tadić to inform the supposedly 'surprised' Schmidt about the origin of the state property portfolio. Possibly by coincidence, the conversation itself occurs at a time when HDZ BiH is bringing back to the agenda of the FBiH Parliament the previously removed draft Law on Construction Land in FBiH.

The draft itself was withdrawn from the Parliament's agenda by the proposer, the FBiH Government, after a belated recognition that state property, in its various modalities of legal continuation, has been in a special status since the decision to adopt the Law on Temporary Prohibition of Disposal in March 2005, and that the direct and indirect transfer of ownership of this property has been suspended, and all possible legal actions that would lead to this are to be considered legally void.

It remains to question the strange, but also understandable, coincidence of the HDZ's attempt and the announced decisions in the National Assembly of RS. Both have the same goal – to repeal the Law on the Prohibition of Disposal of State Property and open the door for the entity and cantonal plundering of the remaining state land.

A malicious person would say a state community in concert with its constituent parts, with the aim of de-subjectivizing the property-legal sovereignty of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. If the Tadić-Schmidt conversation had lasted longer, the current president of the BiH Constitutional Court would probably have informed the 'confused' Schmidt about the fact that state property in its portfolio was predominantly created in a manner contrary to what is protected by the Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which is an integral part of the Dayton Peace Agreement and, by its content, superior to its own contrary provisions in Annex 4.

President Tadić would then have to explain to him that legal logic dictates the necessity of the prior separation of nationalized property after December 31, 1945, when, in the ideological climate of the then system, a significant number of BiH citizens were dispossessed (by confiscation of property) of their property (forests, agricultural land, and other assets) through legal violence.

President Tadić would probably also tell Schmidt that BiH is the only one among all post-communist countries that has not yet passed a law on restitution and denationalization, and that its adoption and the establishment of an institutional framework for its implementation would greatly facilitate the resolution of the contentious issue of state property.

It is not easy to agree with Tadić's message to Schmidt that the issue of state property can be resolved, as he says, 'at the state level by adopting a short law on the registration of state property.' The decisions of the Constitutional Court to which Tadić refers point to the obligation to adopt a law on the management and use of state property, which, due to its complexity in the case of BiH, is not just a 'short law on property registration'.

An uninformed person would claim that the recommendation of a 'short law on property registration' aligns with those solutions for the status of state property that could be operationalized precisely within the intentions coming from RS and those that provide them with supporting reinforcement from the predictable address of HDZ in Mostar.

One can hope that someone will provide Schmidt with an explanation that will complete the entire picture of state property. The Law on Restitution and Denationalization, by its subject matter, falls under Chapter 23 of the EU candidate status, and it cannot be avoided. Some claim that over 300,000 legal successors of those whose property was confiscated are awaiting the solutions it would bring in BiH at this moment.