The proposal of a Bosniak and a Croat party to solve the dispute over elections to the state presidency has met a mixed response from other parties.
Two of Bosnia’s leading parties, the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action, SDA, and the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, have put forward a proposal for electing members of the country’s three-member state presidency.

The proposal, which has met a mixed response, is response to the European Court of Human Rights 2009 Sejdic and Finci ruling.

This told Bosnia to change its constitution and allow minorities to run for the top governing posts currently reserved only for Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats, the three largest ethnic groups.

Under the current electoral system, the three members of presidency are chosen directly, the Serb member from Bosnia’s mainly Serb entity, Republika Srpska, and the two others, a Croat and a Bosniak respectively, from the second entity, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The two plaintiffs, Dervo Sejdic, a Roma, and Jakob Finci, a Jew, want candidates from outside the three main ethnic categories to be able to run for the posts, but most of the reform proposals would still reserve the posts for named ethnic groups.

The SDA-HDZ idea is to establish two electoral units in the Federation from where two members of the state presidency would be elected.

Under their proposal, the two members cannot be from the same ethnic group or both from the category of “others”.

Sulejman Tihic, the head of SDA, on Wednesday said the two parties’ joint solution would end discrimination against ethnic minorities while respecting many of the principles of the ruling parties.

“All citizens would have the same voting rights,” Tihic said. “Also, in the polls we would have two areas that would be multi-ethnic. And they would only serve to elect the Presidency,” he added.

However, the plan has run into criticism. Zeljko Komsic, the Croat member of the Bosnian tripartite Presidency, has condemned the proposal.

On September 18 he said the proposed model would pave the way towards the creation of a third Croat-dominated entity in Bosnia.

The HDZ leader “wants a third entity and Tihic is ready to give it to him and this is a first step,” Komsic claimed.

Another Bosniak party, the Alliance for a Better Future, SBB, was more reserved. It said the model that the SDA proposed was interesting, but that time was needed to think about other solutions.

The main Serbian parties have said that they will accept any solution that the Federation entity decision-makers come up, as long as it does not affect the model of electing the single presidency member from Republika Srpska.

Bosnia’s main parties have said they want a solution to the implementation of the Sejdic and Finci ruling agreed before the October 1 meeting in Brussels, where the representatives of the parties are to meet the EU Enlargement Commissioner, Stefan Fule. balkaninsight