Bosnian Jews Ask For Change in Presidency Election

Only Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks can run for Presidency members and minorities are excluded.

According to the Bosnian Constitution, only constitutive peoples, meaning Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks, can run for the country’s  Presidency seats. 

The president of the Jewish Community in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jakob Finci, thus filed an appeal with the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg to rescind these constitutional provisions.

This is discrimination 

His legal representative, attorney Clive Baldwin, who is at the helm of a lawyer firm dealing with the minorities’ rights protection, said such provisions of the Dayton peace accords were discriminatory, Vecernji list writes. Baldwin believes that the Bosnian Constitution is contrary to the provisions of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the European convention on the protection of human rights and freedoms.

The Upper House and the Presidency forbid the participation of minority groups, Baldwin told the press. He says the fact that Jews have been placed in the same category as others is contentious and the Jews have described it as utterly inappropriate and discriminating.

To ensure the representation of three peoples, they excluded the rest 

Even greater obstacles are the means of electing one of the three Presidency members from the ranks of the Serb, Croat and Bosniak peoples from the two entities. The Croat or Bosniak member cannot be elected by their fellow Croats/Bosniaks from the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska, while Serbs in the Croat-Muslin Bosnian Federation cannot vote for their Presidency member.