Leda Šantić, Grade 11
UWC Mostar
In 2020, following eight additional years of the prolonged term of Mayor Ljubo Bešlić (elected 2008), the city of Mostar (seat of the United World College in Mostar) is finally set to once again hold local elections. These news come as the result of an appeal before the European Court of Human Rights made in 2018 - specifically, Baralija v. Bosnia and Herzegovina. Irma Baralija, a prominent politician, vice president of the political party “Naša stranka” as well as a former teacher at the UWC in Mostar, argued that the consistent blocking of local elections by the Constitutional Court of BaH represented a human rights violation in taking away her right, as a resident of Mostar, to vote and stand in local elections. Following the ruling which confirmed that this was, in fact, a violation of human rights on the basis of one's residence, an agreement, which made possible the organization of local elections by altering the Election Law as well as the Statute of the City, was made by the heads of the leading parties in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the entity in which Mostar lies) - SDA (Bosniak) and HDZ (Croat), and elections are set to take place in December. This, in theory, is a human rights victory, a cause for celebration; especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the people of BaH have found themselves at the mercy of the disorganization and unbridled internal conflict of national authorities - and a victory in the name of democracy is a victory, a leap in the right direction, no matter how small in the grand scheme of things…. Right?
Well, not really.
Enter the Law of Unintended Consequences. Baralija, whose appeal to the ECHR based itself on the vision of a united Mostar, shared her discontent with the way SDA and HDZ handled the Court's decision in a conversation with an interview.ba journalist earlier this year. Her primary concern, and rightfully so, is the balkanization of Mostar into smaller administrative units imposed by the reworked Statute teased by the parties' Agreement, which would take power and significance away from the City as a whole and go further in making sure that Mostar remains divided. The reasoning for this is pretty obvious - maintaining division on an ethnic basis helps these parties remain in power. It is not hard to see why it is disheartening to spot the unlikelihood of any real positive impact on the way the local government works - not only for Baralija as a politician, but for many young people hoping, at long last, for change in their environment.
The other issue is an underlying one, also based in unconstitutionality - and extending past the city limits of Mostar, all across the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton (one of the ten cantons - administrative units of which the Federation consists). It is an interesting fact that, according to the very first point of the Canton's Constitution, it has only two constitutive peoples: Bosniaks and Croats. This differs slightly from not only the Constitution of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (which should, through the power of logic, apply in its entirety to each Canton it consists of) but the famous Dayton Accord - two very important documents! - in disregarding Serbs as a constitutive people and grouping them instead with the "others". This omission, among other things, strips them of the ability to represent themselves in the forthcoming elections, and ignores not only the current Serb population present in the Canton, but, even worse, ahe lludes to the larger issue of the creation of ethnically “clean” regions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by confining Bosnian and Croat constitutionality to the entity of the Federation, and that of Serbs to the other, Republika Srpska. Individual candidates (in particular, SDA’s Šefik Džaferović, a current member of the BaH Presidency) have spoken about solutions to this particular issue before (acknowledging it as an issue!), and it makes sense to believe that, if the Constitutional Court was so quick to act in other instances in which the Constitution was violated, all that separates us from an amendment is an appeal to the aforementioned Court. The reluctance to take these steps, however, indicates that the parties in power, as governing bodies, are deliberately choosing not to do so, as it would work against their interests in some way.
Most early prognoses on the elections sourced from both professional analysts and laymen are colored in cynicism - experience has taught most that the impression of proper democratic practice is merely a formality. If these issues are so simple to grasp and comprehend as issues - why haven’t they been solved yet? - is a haunting question. December is yet to come, however, and it’s difficult for my youthful optimism not to intercept my train of thought, which carries as cargo a basic logical understanding of the way this system seems to be developing, as if to say that maybe, just maybe, it will bring with it a chunk of change.
Well, not really.
Enter the Law of Unintended Consequences. Baralija, whose appeal to the ECHR based itself on the vision of a united Mostar, shared her discontent with the way SDA and HDZ handled the Court's decision in a conversation with an interview.ba journalist earlier this year. Her primary concern, and rightfully so, is the balkanization of Mostar into smaller administrative units imposed by the reworked Statute teased by the parties' Agreement, which would take power and significance away from the City as a whole and go further in making sure that Mostar remains divided. The reasoning for this is pretty obvious - maintaining division on an ethnic basis helps these parties remain in power. It is not hard to see why it is disheartening to spot the unlikelihood of any real positive impact on the way the local government works - not only for Baralija as a politician, but for many young people hoping, at long last, for change in their environment.
The other issue is an underlying one, also based in unconstitutionality - and extending past the city limits of Mostar, all across the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton (one of the ten cantons - administrative units of which the Federation consists). It is an interesting fact that, according to the very first point of the Canton's Constitution, it has only two constitutive peoples: Bosniaks and Croats. This differs slightly from not only the Constitution of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (which should, through the power of logic, apply in its entirety to each Canton it consists of) but the famous Dayton Accord - two very important documents! - in disregarding Serbs as a constitutive people and grouping them instead with the "others". This omission, among other things, strips them of the ability to represent themselves in the forthcoming elections, and ignores not only the current Serb population present in the Canton, but, even worse, ahe lludes to the larger issue of the creation of ethnically “clean” regions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by confining Bosnian and Croat constitutionality to the entity of the Federation, and that of Serbs to the other, Republika Srpska. Individual candidates (in particular, SDA’s Šefik Džaferović, a current member of the BaH Presidency) have spoken about solutions to this particular issue before (acknowledging it as an issue!), and it makes sense to believe that, if the Constitutional Court was so quick to act in other instances in which the Constitution was violated, all that separates us from an amendment is an appeal to the aforementioned Court. The reluctance to take these steps, however, indicates that the parties in power, as governing bodies, are deliberately choosing not to do so, as it would work against their interests in some way.
Most early prognoses on the elections sourced from both professional analysts and laymen are colored in cynicism - experience has taught most that the impression of proper democratic practice is merely a formality. If these issues are so simple to grasp and comprehend as issues - why haven’t they been solved yet? - is a haunting question. December is yet to come, however, and it’s difficult for my youthful optimism not to intercept my train of thought, which carries as cargo a basic logical understanding of the way this system seems to be developing, as if to say that maybe, just maybe, it will bring with it a chunk of change.
www.unitedworldwide.co