The emergency session of Bosnia’s House of Peoples will not be held because there is no quorum. Namely, the three Democratic Action Party (SDA) delegates refused to show up because the agenda consisted of an Election Law Draft Amendment introducing the electoral college in the way BiH Presidency members are elected.

SDA Leader Bakir Izetbegovic, apart from whom Amir Fazlic and Asim Sarajlic refused to join the session, asked the Croat Democratic Union (HDZ BiH) Leader Dragan Covic to cancel the session, but Covic proceeded and scheduled it anyway.

On Tuesday, Izetbegovic, a member of the House of Peoples of BiH Parliamentary Assembly said that “this is an attempt to introduce a law that is unconstitutional and contrary to the Federation (FBiH) entity, a law on which there is no agreement. A law that did get the support of the Interdepartmental Group that was drafted precisely for the purpose of defining the electoral legislature. So, it is a law that will definitely prevent the implementation of the verdicts of the European Court of Human Rights, such as the Sejdic-Finci verdict and it is finally a law that ignores the demands of the OSCE and ODIR to make changes that will guarantee transparency, integrity and fairness of elections.”

Should such a law be adopted, and it would be with the votes from HDZ and the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) delegates, he warned, the situation with the adoption of amendments to the Election law would complicate even further.

“For that reason, we decided not to attend the session and thus stop the adoption of such a backwards proposal,” Izetbegovic concluded

The proposal should have been considered by urgent procedure, at the emergency session.

The request for its consideration was sent by delegates from the Croat Caucus: Dragan Covic, Lidija Bradara, Marina Pendes and Barisa Colak.

With this legal proposal, the proponents suggest that the Croat member of the BiH Presidency should be elected from among the Croat candidates, according to an electoral college model, who would win the most votes in at least three of the five cantons: Herzegovina-Neretva (HNK), Central Bosnia (SBK), West Herzegovina. ZHK), Livno and Posavina cantons.

The HDZ Leader Dragan Covic said after the session was cancelled that he was sorry this had happened and since they predicted this would happen, they scheduled another emergency session for Wednesday at 10 am with the same agenda.