Conference paper
THE ELECTION LAW AND THE DISPUTE OVER UNIVERSALS CROATS, ARE THEY A SUM OF CITIZENS OR A SINGLE PEOPLE?
Ugo Vlaisavljević
orcid.org/0000-0001-7663-186X
; University of Sarajevo
Abstract
The Croatian National Assembly’s proposal to amend the Election Law, after the
Constitutional Court issued its decision in response to a complaint by Dr Bozo Ljubic, is the
first, albeit decisive, step towards improving the political position of the Croatian people
in Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Recently raised and brought into the forefront
of public debate by Croatian officials and representatives, the initiative has been fiercely
opposed by their Bosniak counterparts who unanimously consider it to be a perilous undertaking
threatening the very foundations of the state. What is actually rejected is the
rationale that stands behind the initiative: all complaints about the political status of the
Croatian people in today’s Bosnia are false and invalid.
The CNA’s proposal evidently threatens to insert into the existing legal-political setting of
the Federation something that spreads panic among those interested in preserving status
quo (i. e. an asymmetrical power relations between the two constituent peoples). It seems
that the opponents are fully aware of what is at stake here and what should not be allowed:
Croats, not just as a sum of individual citizens, but as a single people finally endowed with
group rights. Opposed are in fact two irreconcilable views on the constitutional structure
of the polity, both having a clear ethno-national stamp. The dilemma runs thus: the Federation
of B&H, should it be a one-nation-entity or a truly multinational entity, i. e. a federation
in the proper sense of the term?
Keywords
Croats, Bosniaks; constitutive peoples; civic nation; multination state; ethnocultural justice
Hrčak ID:
234911
URI
Publication date:
4.6.2018.
Visits: 991 *