'Civic concept is fine, but not its current implementation'

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Publicists Marko Tomas and Nino Raspdic both agreed that Bosnia's current political system is far from fair and normal, but the disagreed on the type of change Bosnia would need in the future. According to them, the main problem is the relation between the Croats and Bosniaks in the country.

Raspudic, who is also a professor of Italian language at the Zagreb University in Croatia, said the relations were first strained in 2006 when Zeljko Komsic was first elected as the Croat member of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency and at that moment, any form of civic action in the country ceased to exist.

The issue of Zeljko Komsic’s election to the position of Bosnia’s Presidency member was rekindled with his re-election in the 2018 October general election when he ran for what will now be his third term in office, after being elected in 2006 and in 2010. Komsic, who comes from the centre-left Democratic Front (DF) party, won the seat ahead of his main rival, the nationalist Croat Democratic Union’s (HDZ BiH) Dragan Covic.

All the Croat nationalist parties in the country contest Zeljko Komsic’s election, saying he was not elected by the Croat people, therefore his election is illegitimate. However, according to the state Election Law and the Constitution, Zeljko Komsic’s election was legal and constitutional.

Additionally, Bosnia's Constitution, which is the Annex 4 of the Dayton Peace Agreement which ended the war in Bosnia, stipulates that the Presidency will consist of three members, each coming from one of the three constituent peoples in the country, a Bosniak, a Croat and a Serb member.

The Constitution never mentions that Presidency members must be elected exclusively by members of each people, but only adds that the Serb member is elected by voters from the Serb dominated, Republika Srpska (RS) entity and that Bosniak and Croat members are elected by voters from the Bosniak and Croat dominated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) entity.

“The civic concept is fine, but the way in which this concept is implemented is not,” Marko Tomas who lives and works in Bosnia's southern town of Mostar said, adding that the 2013 census of population in the country shows best just how possible it is to establish the civic concept in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“The census was a chance for people to say whether they support the civic concept or not. That is where we could see best whether we have a chance for such a society, but it showed that our chances are slim to none,” Tomas added.

“The census showed that almost everyone said they belong to one of the three constituent peoples.”

However, Tomas noted that no one asked what is life going to be like in Bosnia, in the next 10 years.

“All we do is ask who is legal and who is legitimate, but to what end? Neither Dzaferovic (the newly elected Bosniak member of the Presidency) nor Komsic can answer that question,” he added.

“The civic concept is built into the Dayton Peace Agreement in the form of the House of Representatives and his (Komsic’s) statements (of a civic state of Bosnia) during his election campaign are unconstitutional,” Raspudic responded adding that the ideal internal structure for Bosnia would be that of three entities which would allow the citizens to practice the civic concept of government.

In his opinion, “the creation of a third entity in Bosnia, or two mega-cantons in the FBiH entity is necessary” for the equality of all three peoples in the country.