The Constitutional Court of Bosnia's Bosniak-Croat entity, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, will decide if last week's session of the upper house of the entity parliament, the House of Peoples, and the election of the entity's new president and government violates the entity constitution, as requested by Federation President Borjana Kristo and Federation Deputy Prime Minister Vjekoslav Bevanda, the president of the Constitutional Court, Kata Senjak, said on Tuesday.
Judge Senjak confirmed that the Constitutional Court had requested the House of Peoples to submit documentation on the disputed session and on the adoption of the decision on the appointment of the new president and government of the Federation entity.
Senjak said that the Constitutional Court would treat this case as a priority after it received the required documents from the House of Peoples.
Bosnia's Central Election Commission (SIP) on Monday requested documents on the disputed entity parliament session at which a coalition led by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) appointed the new entity president. SIP is expected to discuss the matter on Thursday.
The SDP, the majority Bosniak Party of Democratic Action (SDA), the Croatian Party of Rights (HSP) and the Prosperity Through Work Party (NSRzB) last week appointed the executive authorities of the Federation entity. Representatives of the two Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) parties, HDZ BiH and HDZ 1990, said on Monday that they would not respect those decisions, requesting that it be established if they were in line with the entity constitution and announcing that they would call a session of the Croat National Assembly (HNS).
The HNS was established on 28 October 2000 in Novi Travnik as an informal body consisting of elected Croat representatives from municipal councils and the cantonal, entity and state parliaments. The purpose of its establishment was to warn that the elected Croat representatives in the authorities were not equal to representatives of the other two peoples, the Serbs and the Bosniaks.
On March 3, 2001, the HNS declared Croat self-rule in order to oppose decisions of the entity and state authorities which did not include political parties which won most Croat votes, primarily the HDZ BiH.
The body was never formally dissolved, but it ceased its activities and the Croat self-rule was dissolved in late 2001, when HDZ deputies started attending sessions of the entity and state parliaments.
The leading cultural association of the Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Matica Hrvatska, said today that the unconstitutional decisions on the establishment of the new Federation government humiliated the Croat people and threatened a worsening of relations between the ethnic communities in that entity.
