Dossier: Election Law in B&H, Part One

Who Gets the Glory, and Who the Victory

AIM Sarajevo, 2 February, 2000

As soon as it was published in Sarajevo newspapers that Francois Froment-Meurice (head of the group of the Office of High Representative for drafting election law of B&H) expressed doubt about survival of B&H and forecast annexation of the Republika Srpska with Serbia, it was clear that this was the final blow to the mildly speaking unpopular draft Election Law. After several months of campaign against the draft law marked as a segregative and discriminatory document, launched by the opposition parties headed by Social Democrats and NGOs, at the latest session of the Parliamentary Assembly of B&H, this draft experienced a complete and utter fiasco. In the Assembly Froment-Meurice himself, excited but also unconvincing, tried to contradict the writing of B&H press, but with a majority of votes the draft election law was rejected with repeatedly stated conviction of the delegates that it was an unacceptable document which jeopardised fundamental human rights of more than one third citizens of B&H and moreover that it had been written by an expert who advocated division of the state of B&H.

To be certain that something was wrong with the proposed draft Election Law it is sufficient to glance at the results of the vote: only the delegates of the Radical Party of RS (leader: Nikola Poplasen) and those of the Serb Democratic Party (leader: Momcilo Krajisnik) voted in favour of it and then insisted that it be imposed by the High Representative. Even the ruling ethnic parties from the Federation either abstained from voting (majority of the delegates of the Croat Democratic Community - HDZ) or voted against it (majority of the delegates from the party of Democratic Action - SDA) with a surprising confession of SDA delegate S. Tihic that "such a law is good for the party, but not for B&H". In other words, the regime would survive with it, but the citizens would not.

According to the latest announcements from the Office of High Representative (OHR) and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), extensive amendments are in preparation of the by now former draft Election Law, deletion of some of its parts and reformulation of rules, after which it will be presented to the delegates of the Parliamentary Assembly of B&H once again. Similar was also announced by Social Democrats (SDP) who had sent their own version of the election law to the state parliament even before international institutions did it, which did not get the needed number of votes either. After vehement discussions about the rules of future elections which can significantly change, but also petrify the current political situation in B&H, both the SDA and HDZ announced that they would also make their own draft election laws.

HOW THE LAW WAS MADE

By Annex 3 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia & Herzegovina (popularly known as the Dayton accords) drafting of the election law of B&H was prescribed, and the postwar elections were so far regulated by the controversial Interim Election Law. The latest Declaration of the Peace Implementation Council (Madrid, December 1998) recommended drafting of a permanent election law for B&H, and it was concluded that such a law should promote the idea of a multiethnic democratic state, and a future administration which will be capable of implementing it and which will be responsible for its deeds to all the citizens of B&H and not just its single-ethnic or narrow party electorate. Then OHR, that is, the then high representative Carlos Westendorp, and OSCE chaired by Ambassador Robert Barry, formed a Working Group consisting of several local experts and the mentioned French expert for election laws Froment-Meurice as the chairman. This Group - which a silent war between OHR and OSCE was fought for a long time about who would have the jurisdiction over its work - worked on the text of the election law for more than a year, partly in B&H and partly in Paris. Allegedly they did it for a monthly compensation for local members of two thousand German marks, plus paid travelling expenses, and an unknown figure for the French lawyer. About the results of their work more than 80 per cent of various pollees publicly declared that they were unacceptable, segregative, even "fascistic" (F. Banjanovic, president of the Association of Refugees which threatened with general boycott of the elections had the draft been adopted).

After a whole year of work, the draft law was completed and prepared for the parliament. But that is when the problems started to complicate. The OHR and the OSCE, already irritated by negative reactions of the public to the proposed draft, were faced for the first time with two for them, it seems, formerly unknown facts: neither is the democratic alternative in B&H in duty-bound to applaud to the international community regardless of the steps it takes and decisions it makes in the country, but nor can the international community in B&H do whatever it pleases, outside its institutions and exceeding its prescribed jurisdiction.

WHO IS DRAGO LJUBIC?

Self-confident that every document prepared in B&H by international institutions must result in unquestionable acceptance and thunderous support of opposition multiethnic parties and NGOs according to the principle "we and you on one side, the regime on the other", the OSCE and OHR made the first mistake in their campaign in favour of the election law. Led by logic that they needed to lobby in favour of the election law among the ruling parties with which they usually have problems and not among their reliable partners from the democratic alternative, these two institutions "forgot" to send the draft law to the opposition parties and hear their suggestions or possible criticism. At the same time, OSCE organised the campaign for the necessity of passing the Election Law as an exclusive campaign in favour of the specific law, that is, its prepared draft, and it spent on it the money allocated for education of the citizens about the necessity of election rules.

However, the draft version of the law which arrived at the seats of opposition parties and citizens' associations a long time after the pompously initiated campaign of the OHR and OSCE, was sufficient for a vehement reaction of the democratic alternative in B&H which was more than crushing: it ranged from the announced boycott or emigration from the country to demanding that all those who participated in writing of such a draft answer for it. Discontent caused by behaviour of OSCE and OHR reached its climax after a leaflet of OSCE for education of the public about the necessity of elections in B&H was published in media. In its leaflet, OSCE (which later declared that it was a "harmless mistake") divided 42 delegates of the Parliamentary Assembly according to their ethnic origin and concluded that at the supreme house in B&H there should be 14 Serbs from RS and 28 Bosniacs and Croats from B&H Federation. However, in the Provisional Election Commission Rules and Regulations it is clearly written: "The House of Representatives of B&H Parliamentary Assembly consists of 42 members, 28 of whom are directly elected by the voters registered on the territory of B&H Federation, and 14 on the territory of the Republika Srpska". That means, the delegates come from a certain entity, but are not of prescribed ethnic origin. Because of this "mistake" (printed and distributed in one million copies!) delegates of Serb ethnic origin from the Federation and delegates, Bosniacs, who live in RS claimed that OSCE advocates ethnic segregation and that in this way they should renounce their ethnic origin because they live in "the wrong entity". (This dangerous platitude about the "people with a flaw" who "live in a wrong place" was also uttered by Francois Froment-Meurice in his interview to Dnevni avaz from Sarajevo).

On the other hand, Social Democrats of B&H not only criticised the offered draft Election Law and by doing it almost insulted the OHR and OSCE, launched an offensive by introducing into Parliamentary Assembly their own version of the draft law through their delegates as proposers. They also put the question to the OHR and OSCE how they intended to put the draft law into the legal procedure for passage. The answer of representatives of international institutions who were caught unprepared by the question went along the following lines: "when we choose we will ourselves introduce the draft into procedure". After SDP had reminded them that they did not have the power to do that and that they had to stick to legislative provisions (the High Representative is authorised to impose a law but only if legal institutions refuse to pass it, but not to create it in advance and introduce it into the voting procedure on its own initiative, that is, to be the proposer of the procedure) the OHR and OSCE started frantically looking for a volunteer who would be the proposer of their draft law. Since according to legal provisions, the proposers of a law can be only delegates of B&H parliament, or groups of delegates of certain political parties, members of B&H Presidency or Council of Ministers, they chose an anonymous deputy Drago Ljubica who is a member of Serb People's League (SNP) of Biljana Plavsic. Parties from the Federation had already declared themselves against the draft law, they did not dare rely on delegates who are representatives of Poplasen's and Krajisnik's party because of their extremely negative political background, so that the nowadays almost completely silent Plavsic's party and unknown Ljubic seemed as an ideal compromise for introducing the draft law into parliamentary procedure. Later Ljubic himself said that he felt "sorry for the OHR and OSCE because everybody refused" to do it, so he agreed to be the official proposer of their document in the parliament of B&H and said that he did it free of charge (contrary to the well-paid expert team) because he could not watch them toil with the parliamentary procedure. Soon after that this draft became known in the parliament as "Drago's law" which sometimes caused thunderous laughter among those present especially when some delegates addressed Ljubic with questions to clarify for them the draft law: "Would you clarify to this esteemed House what you meant by item 7a in the second part of the third chapter of your law"...". Shaking his head, he would answer: "I have no idea about that law, don't you ask me anything!" Or when during breaks of the session they tried to persuade him to withdraw the draft law which he as the proposer was entitled to do, and to "admit" that he had just realised how bad the law he had proposed was.

How hard did the OHR and OSCE try to conceal their wrong estimate, but also their ignorance of the institutional limitations of their mission is best illustrated by the fact that they are nowadays avoiding to mention in all public documents Drago Ljubic, the legal and legitimate proposer of their draft law, and that on the Internet web site of OSCE mission in B&H (www.oscebih.org) they are persistently claiming that "on 21 October, draft election law was formally presented to the Parliamentary Assembly by High Representative Ambassador Robert L. Barry, head of OSCE mission, and Francois Froment-Meurice, chairman of the Working Group"!?

Note: Due to the length of the text, continued in the text titled: Dossier: Election Law in B&H, Part Two