Does B&H Need a New Election Law?

Voting or Election

AIM Banja Luka, 23 December, 1998

The latest sessions of the assembly of Republika Srpska show that the elections have brought persons into its benches who are not capable of executing the duty of deputies. These deputies were foisted on the voters by political parties which put them on the collective election lists of candidates. Leaders of political parties compile lists of candidates and submit them to election committees. They accept them without going into the fact how many pigs in a poke there are among them. Some of them, due to indecent pre-election behavior, are taken off the lists by the High Representative, but majority of them remain. Since the citizens vote for the list and not for individuals - they elect them. The citizens learn how many inapt deputies they have elected only after election results are made public.

Discharging the duty of a deputy is one of the most responsible obligations in a political system. In the elections, citizens transfer a part of their rights on the deputies who under oath accept to exercise them conscientiously. But, since some deputies are made of very poor human material, they show their true nature at the very first session of the assembly: they fail expectations of the citizens, disregard rules of behavior of deputies, and act acording to their insticts. Only then do the voters become aware of what they have doen. In some election systems it is possible to recall such deputies, but not here.

At the first and the second session of the Assembly of RS, a large number of deputies acted inappropriately. They spent hours haggling about the agenda. As if it were important whether some issue is the first on the agenda or not. It is obvious that obstruction is used to achieve something. Then resistance was offered to put some issue on the agenda and finally, decisions which are necessary and which must be made are rejected. For example, at the second session of the National Assembly of RS, resistance was offered to passing the laws on property and housing relations which RS should have passed in August according to the decision reached in Bonn. Only thanks to Westendorp who was full of understanding for the situation in RS, passing of these laws was postponed. They open new possibilities for return of refugees which is a precondition for creation of a multiethnic state. However, putting up resistance to passing these laws was organized in the Assembly and a true hue and cry outside the Assembly. First the leaders and deputies of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) declared at press conferences that they would boycott voting for these laws, and on the day of the session of the Assembly rabble-rousers appeared in Bijeljina threatening that they would block 60 towns should these laws be passed. We have in this way once again manifested our predatory and savage nature - that we are capable of usurping other people's property and live in it as if it were ours. And this was banned even by Roman law. Many of those who have usurped other people's property are not even refugees, but they have taken advantage of the chaotic situation and abandoned their own property or left someone to guard it for them and taken possession of other people's because it was better. Is not that banditry stimulated by some political parties in order to win their votes. Besides, in this way, the so-called "humane migration" of the population is achieved. What will happen to the Dayton accords - let Westendorp worry about that!

Such a situation may be changed by a significant amendment of the election procedure which would make not only voting but primarily elections closer to the citizen, which would enable him to influence the election procedure more than he does now. The current OSCE election procedure is so complicated and so conservative that it keeps the (citizens) voters in a passive position and on the margin of the process. That is the reason why the citizens have greatly voted against their won interest. Mistakes were repeated from previous elections. RS was comparatively stable, more stable than many other regions of former Yugoslavia. With these elections we are going back to the state of crisis. In the election campaign, candidates attacked each other, parties charged at each other, and failed to tackle problems. The impression was that individuals and groups would do anything to get hold of power. This has nothing to do with parliamentarism; these are predatory, gangster forms of it which lead to inversion of democracy and parliamentarism.

This situation can essentially be changed by turning voting into elections in which citizens will choose platforms and persons; they wish to elect persons, not lists of candidates. The OSCE has invested great effort and money into the elections, but hardly any good did they do; indeed, it had made a few strategic mistakes. In multiethnic regions lists of candidates were single-ethnic, the electorate split along ethnic divisions, those who will never return from abroad voted in the elections. Three ethnic collectivities have become constituent elements of the society, and not the citizens, perpetuating a national and not civil society, which Dayton accords insisted on. As long as the citizens are not the constituent element of the society, it will not become stable. And in order to make the citizens that, they must be equal on the whole territory of B&H, which ethnic oligarchies are opposed to. In highly organized federations, the emphasis of the society is on the state and not the nation. The national regime is reproduced and multiplied in this space, which keeps the society far from a civil society.

By implementation of certain solutions from the Dayton accords, B&H has no chance to become a multiethnic and multi-operational state. The stand "stick to the Dayton accords" can be interpreted not only as the effort to implement it, but just as much as the intention to maintain the existing relations. In the minutes of negotiations in Dayton it is stated that the accords are just the foundation, and that entities will elaborate it during implementation. If anything in them should be amended, it is in the election system and the manner in which state agencies of B&H are constituted.

The current election system in B&H is not in compliance with the election system in other countries, nor with our needs and habits. That is why it should be amended. It was conceived by nationalists in Dayton with the support of the so-called international community. Instead of leading to stabilization of the society, the elections supported chaos. B&H is an unfinished community in every respect: as a state, as a multiethnic and as an economic community. Nations in B&H seem to be sentenced to live together in a decentralized and operationally incoherent state.

B&H can be considered as a testing ground for investigating how long it is possible to live without a state and rights after a catastrophic war. Not even in the latest election campaign, third after peace had been established, has a single party advocated creation of operational institutions of the state of B&H or how the present chaotic situation could be overcome. They all tried to avoid B&H, the need to develop its institutions, return of refugees. Their entire preoccupation reminded of an immature charge at winning power. In this sense there is no essential difference among the parties, except for their different names. And the gap in the level of development between B&H and the world is still broadening. In developed countries, the society is integrated by the state and not the nation; nation is an imaginary community; it cannot be the main subject of social development.

Nationalism in B&H still remains the foundation of social relations. This situation has the stronghold in the Dayton accords and in election rules of OSCE. This situation should be changed in order to achieve a secular society.

Dr Mico Carevic

(AIM)

(The author is a professor of constitutional law)