Komsic: Croatia shouldn't interfere in amending Bosnia election law

FENA

Croat member of Bosnia's tripartite Presidency Zeljko Komsic said on Monday evening that Croatia should not interfere in how Bosnia would amend its election legislation.

Commenting on the Zagreb meeting at which Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic received vice-presidents of the Bosnian parliament’s upper house, Bakir Izetbegovic of the Bosniak Democratic Action Party (SDA) and Dragan Covic of the Croat Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BiH) earlier in the day, Komsic told the public broadcaster of Bosnia’s Croat-Bosniak Federation entity that in his opinion it was wrong to arrange meetings with party officials in their capacities as the representatives of the peoples.

The SDA party is the strongest Bosniak party and the HDZ BiH is the party with the highest approval ratings among the local Croats.

Komsic, whose Democratic Front (DF) is a part of the ruling majority in Bosnia and has partnership relations with the SDA, said that before his trip to Zagreb, Izetbegovic had informed him about the scheduled meeting with the Croatian PM Plenkovic.

Komsic said that that he warned Izetbegovic to “be careful about what he will discuss in Zagreb”, and to have in his mind that he would participate in the Zagreb meeting as “the leader of a political party and not of a people.”

During the talks held in Zagreb as part of regular dialogue between the Croatian premier and political representatives of the three constituent peoples in Bosnia, Plenkovic underscored that it is essential to enable all the three constituent peoples to exercise their equal rights and enjoy their legitimate representativeness in the country’s institutions.

Interlocutors welcomed the signing of the agreement on amending the election legislation and on holding local elections in the southern city of Mostar, which paved the way for the further normalisation and better arrangement of the relations between the Bosniak and the Croat peoples, according to a press release issued by the Croatian government.