Press release: The Constitutionality of the CEC Decision on Awarding Missing Mandates in the FBiH Parliament’s House of Peoples to be Questioned

The Initiative for Monitoring the European Integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina responds to the decision of the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CEC) to award mandates to delegates of the House of Peoples of the Parliament of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) on the basis of additional criteria and procedures stipulated by themselves.

The Initiative for Monitoring the European Integration of BiH warns that the Criteria and Procedure for Filling the Missing Mandates in the House of Peoples of the Parliament of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the 2018 General Elections, adopted by the CEC on February 27, 2019, and thus the decisions on awarding three missing mandates from March 5, 2019 – are in contradiction to the FBiH Constitution. The CEC Criteria and Procedure stipulates that the missing mandates are awarded to candidates who have not been elected to cantonal assemblies, but paragraph (1) of Article IV.A.8. of the FBiH Constitution stipulates that the House of Peoples’ delegates are elected by cantonal assemblies from among their delegates, which means that the CEC derogated the Constitution by awarding mandates to persons who were not even elected to cantonal assemblies.

We remind the public that this is not the first time that the Serb Caucus has not been filled with sufficient number of delegates, but that so far legislative and constituent bodies have not invested the least effort to adequately amend the FBiH Constitution and the BiH Electoral Law  to enable the CEC to conduct indirect elections for the FBiH Parliament’s House of Peoples, and ensure equal representation of the constituent peoples in that house.

We call upon all those who are authorized to initiate the process of constitutional review of the Criteria and Procedures adopted by the CEC and the decisions made on the basis of these Criteria and Procedure. We also call upon those who are authorized to access to amending the FBiH Constitution and the BiH Electoral Law in order to finally solve the problem of filling the FBiH Parliament’s House of Peoples.