03/03/2010 President
Strasbourg, 03.03.2010 – Bosnia and Herzegovina urgently needs wide constitutional change, but – as an immediate first step, before the October elections – at least the provisions excluding some citizens from standing for the Presidency and the House of Peoples should be changed, Mevlüt Çavusoglu, the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), said today in Sarajevo.
Speaking at a press conference at the end of a three-day official visit to the country (1-3 March), the President said: “It can be done in two months, before the deadline for changes to the electoral law. The substance is there – we have sound proposals from the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, as well as domestic and international initiatives – but what is needed is the political will.” This step would bring the country into line with the recent judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Sejdic and Finci v. BiH, he pointed out.
The President continued: “This will send a powerful signal, both to the citizens of the country and to the international community, that Bosnia and Herzegovina has a political class which can solve problems and move forward. In the long term, this will bring greater political benefits than the defence of narrow party and ethnic interests.”
The President said he was aware of the difficult circumstances in which Bosnia had developed, and was glad that some progress has been made: “But this is not as much as the country and its citizens deserve.” The country urgently needs to move forward, with functioning institutions to address the ordinary concerns of citizens, otherwise it faces the risk that its institutions are considered illegitimate, a flow of new complaints to the European Court and a possible challenge in the Assembly, he stressed.
Mr Çavusoglu also called for compromise on the organisation of a census in 2011, and said he believed that “technical solutions” could be found that would meet all concerns. The return of displaced persons, and guaranteeing their social rights, should also be addressed urgently, but the two issues should not be conditional on one another.
During his visit, Mr Çavusoglu met the Presidency, the Chair of the Council of Ministers, and the Speakers of both chambers of the Parliamentary Assembly, as well as the leaders of the main political parties in the country. He also delivered an address to both chambers of the Assembly.