FORMATION OF NEW MUNICIPALITIES

ETHNIC CRITERION HIDDEN BEHIND REFUGEES

AIM Sarajevo, 21 February, 1997

Whether new municipalities in the Federation should be formed now or wait for "better times" - has become or at least is presented as a question of vital political significance, which further operation of federal agencies, that is of federal partners - the SDA and the HDZ - is linked to.

Croat representatives in the authorities of the Federation of B&H, in other words the HDZ, believe that urgent formation of municipalities Domaljevac-Samac, Doboj-Istok, Gornje Ravne, Ravne-Brcko, Teocak, Usora and Sapna, and change of Jajce municipality borders, were in the national interest which will not be given up easily. For the Bosniacs, this is a problem which should be left aside to wait until authorities were formed on the state, federal and cantonal level, and only afterwards, municipalities should be formed pursuant requirements prescribed by law.

At the last session of the Government of B&H Federation, the federal partners tried to make the draft law on formation of new municipalities and change of borders of the municipality of Jajce in order to forward it to the parliament. However, the attempt proved to be unsuccessful. The Croat representatives left the session and in this way blocked further operation of majority of federal institutions.

At the previous session of the Government of the Federation, when after discussion this issue was rejected with the explanation that it needed further elaboration, Minister of justice Mato Tadic whose ministry proposed this draft law, in his explanation of reasons for its adoption, stressed that parts of the Federation which demanded to be constituted as separate municipalities had fulfilled the requirements: they had more than four thousand inhabitants, compact territories, and more than 50 per cent of the population had voted in favour of formation of the new municipality.

The Bosniac representatives reacted to this by concluding that first of all freedom of movement and return of refugees on the whole territory of the Federation needed to be enabled. Their stance was that only after cantonal administration began operation, a public discussion in cantons-districts should be organized. Along with it, they demanded that an expert opinion of the Ministry of regional organization and the environment be provided.

A special problem was the demand for establishment of two new municipalities on the territory of Brcko. Prime Minister of the Federation, Edhem Bicakcic, stressed that insisting on this issue could have negative effects on further destiny of this region. The Croat representatives did not agree with this opinion, believing that the fact that there already existed three municipalities in Brcko should be taken into account. According to the words of Minister Tadic "even the arbiters of the Tribunal on this city had taken this fact into account".

The following session of the Government was a re-run of the previous with the already mentioned outcome. Deputy minister of justice Safet Pasic demanded that collegiate body of the ministry declare its view of this issue, because as he said "this is not a question of confrontation but of different approaches to the problem". However, so far nothing of the sort has been done.

Minister of regional organization and the environment, Ibrahim Morankic whose ministry was asked to give its expert opinion, believes that establishment of some municipalities would be acceptable, but that changes of the borders of Jajce to which Skender Vakuf would be annexed, would mean enabling one nation (the Croats) to outvote the other. Constituting of the new municipality of Usor, according to his opinion, would be putting too much emphasis on the ethnic criterion. Nevertheless, Morankic believes that constitution of new municipalities should be postponed until state agencies are formed - first the federal and then the cantonal. Reasons for such postponement are exaggerated authorizations seized by local authorities, which he believes are "inherited from the previous system in which municipalities had a very high level of state authority".

According to him, the entire federal space could soon experience transformation by establishment of a large number of new municipalities. In this way, this could be some kind of an overture to this process, but with somewhat different criteria.

"I believe that parts of municipalities which are in the Federation and have four thousand inhabitants should be enabled to become new municipalities, and they will say for themselves whether they want to. Those parts which have less than two thousand inhabitants should be annexed to the existing municipalities, and as for regions with between two and four thousand people, a model has not been constructed yet", Morankic claims.

The legislature office of the Government of the Federation had no complaints against the draft offered by the Ministry of Justice, but the opinions of municipal agencies who are directly concerned about this issue vary depending on the percentage of ethnic composition of the local population.

For instance, in the opinion of the Municipal Council of Srebrenik it is stated that they do not agree with separation of Cerike, Donja Hrgova, Gornja Spionica and Srednja Spionica from the municipality of Srebrenik. According to the draft law, these places should become part of the newly-constituted municipality of Ravne Brcko. The explanation of the Council is that only about 50 per cent of the pre-war population nowadays live in these parts.

The fact that majority of these municipalities is already operating should not be neglected, nor that they are more or less ethnically cleansed and that all they need is that their operation be legalized. There is no doubt that the HDZ and the SDA agree that formation of these new municipalities is inevitable, because after all every western European country has several thousand municipalities with eight thousand inhabitants at the most. But Bosnia & Herzegovina is not Belgium if for no other reason then because the authorities here operate solely in ethnic code. The Bosniacs think that demands of the HDZ for formation of new municipalities are based primarily on ethnic criterion, while according to the words of the federal Minister of justice Mate Tadic "nobody can deny the Bosniacs in Livno, if they meet the requirement of four thousand inhabitants, compact territory and 50 per cent of those in favour of formation of a new territory, the right to make their own municipality".

However, in order to achieve that right, first people who were banished must be enabled to return home, but the current trend of further banishment should also be interrupted in the Federation. Until then, the Forum of the Federation was entrusted with the task to find the quickest possible solution for this issue which would be satisfactory for both parties. It will be interesting to see how they will manage to do it when because of vagueness of the federal Constitution any major issue can be claimed to be of national interest. Or perhaps, like for who knows how many times before, federal disputes will be cut short by order and power of the international community, primarily the Americans.

ELDIN KARIC