Croatia's Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina Ivan Sabolic has described as "tendentious manipulation" statements by some of the Bosniak politicians that Croatian PM Andrej Plenkovic negated rulings by the European Court of Human Rights which call for the electoral and constitutional reform in BiH.

n an interview with the BHT 1 public broadcaster, given during his visit to BiH earlier this week, the Croatian prime minister commented on the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which determined that BiH citizens are discriminated against in the electoral process based on their ethnicity or place of residence.

The most well-known and the first of these rulings, in the Jakob Finci-Dervo Sejdic case, was delivered by the ECHR in 2009, while the most recent one, concerning a lawsuit filed by Slaven Kovacevic, an advisor to BiH Presidency member Zeljko Komsic, was handed down last month. None of these rulings have been implemented yet.

Plenkovic said he saw these cases as attempts to change the political structure of BiH. “I believe the Sejdic-Finci as well as all other rulings from that court are a legal way of achieving political goals.”

“All of these cases were fabricated… Everyone knows that, it’s just that the practice is what it is. These cases were initiated for political reasons. The BiH we know today was created in Dayton, which was a political agreement after the war, designed as a peace project, and everything that came after is just an upgrade,” he said.

Plenkovic’s statements drew strong reactions from Bosniak politicians who said that he was negating the ECHR rulings.

Croatia’s Ambassador to BiH Ivan Sabolic claims that that is not the case.

“It is, however, a fact that such wrong interpretations by some of the political actors in BiH constitute unnecessary politicising and tendentious manipulation of PM Plenkovic’s messages, serving evidently for electioneering purposes ahead of the local elections in BiH,” Sabolic told the FENA news agency.

He went on to say that Plenkovic advocated the implementation of the ECHR rulings insisting on respect for the rights of all BiH citizens regardless of their ethnic background or place of residence but also of the rulings of the BiH Constitutional Court guaranteeing the rights of the constituent peoples, including BiH Croats.

“Amendment of the BiH election legislation is necessary to correct the anomalies that are not based on and are not provided for by the Dayton-Paris peace agreement. That is why various political initiatives that are being offered under the guise of civic equality but actually derogate from the BiH Constitution, are aimed at negating the equality and legitimate representation of all three constituent peoples in BiH,” Sabolic said, adding that undermining the equality of the three constituent peoples can “threaten the stability of the whole of BiH as well as the functioning of the political system defined by the Dayton-Paris peace agreement.”

The ECHR has handed down five verdicts in cases against BiH seeking the amendment of the country’s election law as well as its constitution.