by Senad PECANIN
KASAPOVIC: Legal election thresholds needed for representation in parliament are believed to be the most effective means for prevention of fragmentation of parliaments [the situation in which many parties have a few representatives each]. And high fragmentation of parliament is almost directly related to instability of the executive authorities. However, regarding the election system used in these elections in Bosnia-Hercegovina, we had an opportunity to witness several unbelievable developments, which make no sense from the point of view of the organization of an election system. You probably already know that the existing election system in Bosnia, with compensation seats, is actually a copy of the Scandinavian election system. Similar election systems exist in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. However, all of them differ from the Bosnian electoral system is a small but very significant way. There the law does not impose any threshold for directly elected representatives, because the size of electoral districts and number of representatives directly elected from a unit automatically set a high, so-called natural threshold. That means that a party, or coalition, must win a certain proportion of votes in order to participate in the distribution of directly elected seats, while at the national level, where compensation seats are distributed, the law prescribes the electoral census needed for participation in the distribution of these seats. In Denmark that census is two percent of votes, nationally, in Norway and Sweden the census is four percent of votes nationally, or 12 percent of votes in at least one electoral district. In Bosnia-Hercegovina that system was set upside down! They introduced election census in individual electoral districts, but there is no census on the national level, where compensation seats are distributed. There is another thing, which is even worse. There is a ridiculous census of three percent in individual electoral districts, for the Bosnian parliament. In those districts, districts of small or moderate size, five to six representatives are directly elected to the Bosnian parliament, which means that the natural census is several times larger than 3 percent. Therefore, in those cases election census does not make any sense and should not have been introduced, as Scandinavian countries clearly demonstrate. In order to win a directly elected seat in one of those electoral districts a candidate must receive at least 5, sometimes even 10 percent of votes, especially in districts with three candidates. On the other hand, the census for distribution of compensation seats is set by the law. This is done because those seats were not envisaged as a reward for total political losers, those who garner less than one percent of votes on the national level. Such political factors are not capable of surviving on their own and should not be rewarded because of various hidden political motives and interests. Therefore, the election system in Bosnia-Hercegovina suffers from a huge lack of logic, which is obviously a consequence of political goals and produces a terribly fragmented parliament, most recently with 14 political parties. You are aware that moderate pluralism requires at most five political parties in the parliament. I am afraid that the Bosnian parliament simply will not be able to act efficiently at all.
I am not aware of anyone who trusts the Election Commission when they say that their decision about the distribution of compensation seats has nothing to do with orders of the representatives of the international community, and they desire to dampen the election triumph of the SDA, SDS, and HDZ to a certain extent.
You've identified the hidden political interest I've just mentioned. They simply want to modify election results. Their goal is to marginalize large national parties and they are trying to do that through institutions, through political engineering. Unfortunately, they are doing that in a very dumb and random fashion, which keeps backfiring, as these elections have also demonstrated. Such things cannot be done by force, as they are trying to do. Look, they are convinced that national parties cannot create stable authorities, that they do not guarantee the future of Bosnia-Hercegovina. That may be true, but perhaps it isn't. We need to check whether something may have changed in the meantime in national parties, whether some reform wings have surfaced, I don't know... But this, what they want, and they want a government without the SDA, the HDZ, and SDS, which is absolutely clear, will lead to totally unstable catastrophic authorities that, I fear, may take BH into a new political crisis. What will happen? There will be a coalition government put together by the international community. Such a coalition will include 10 to 11 political parties, while the largest party in the coalition will have about 10 seats in the parliament. What's worst, small, insignificant parties with only one seat in the parliament, and support of 0.5 or 1 percent of voters, are given enormous power to blackmail, because the survival or fall of the government depends on that single vote in the parliament. A similar situation existed in Israel for a while, but in a different context, and they tried to deal with it by directly electing the Prime Minister. I do not advocate that, I think that is a very bad solution, but they tried to reduce the power of small parties to blackmail and make huge demands on the basis of that single seat and support of half a percent of voters. That is a recipe for total obstruction and blockade of political decision-making. Of course, such coalitions are not capable of any, let alone significant, social or political reforms.
Such actions of the international community are justified by the intentions to secure brighter and more prosperous future for BH, which excludes the leading role of national parties. In this case, does "the goal justify means", that is the elimination of largest national parties despite election results?
I don't think so. A goal could justify means if those means were appropriate and if effects of their actions were good. But these effects are not good and they haven't achieved any results so far. I am afraid that their most recent plan also does not guarantee anything. Look, the current election system in BH was imposed by the international community and it failed to accomplish any of the envisaged goals. It did not secure just political representation. If the SDA, as the strongest political party in BH, receives more than 30 percent of votes and has less than a quarter of seats in the parliament, that cannot be described as just political representation. Secondly, the election system did not secure a concentration of political forces. On the contrary it has fragmented the parliament and all the political institutions to an unprecedented degree. Voters do not understand what happened with their votes and why the declared final election results do not reflect the desires of the voters. The authorities that will be created, if the authorities desired by the international community are created, will be legal, but they won't be legitimate. The decisions of such authorities will simply not be accepted by the population, and consequently it will be impossible to implement them. Goals cannot keep justifying bad means that produce even worse results. If a goal is good and if some sort of progress is achieved - political, economic, social - then we can say "fine, it was necessary to do that, everyone resorts to electoral and institutional engineering to some extent". But, to do that so openly, so arrogantly, and achieve next to nothing... I think that the basic problem is the whole international management, post-conflict management in BH, whose results are deplorable. I did some research and found out that in Japan, the country that was devastated by nuclear bombs, a single American general managed to create in seven years preconditions for the development of the greatest economic force and the most stable democracy in Asia. This year we marked seven years since the signing of the Dayton Agreement, and the huge military bureaucratic administrative apparatus of Europe has failed to produce even a decent election system in BH.
What about the argument, offered by the president of the Election Commission, trying to justify her decision about compensation seats, that supporters of small parties that failed to pass the election census also have the right to their representatives in entity and Bosnian parliaments?
That is simply ridiculous. If that was the case, then there would not be any legal election thresholds. No one advocates the principle of absolutely just representation anymore, the principle according to which even half a percent of electorate must have its representative. That is impossible and leads to chaos in institutions and that is why electoral censuses are introduced. The goal according to which the parliament is supposed to be an absolutely correct reflection of the society, social interests, ballots cast by voters, is sacrificed for the sake of efficiency. That means that you concentrate political forces in order to create preconditions for the efficient functioning of institutions. Otherwise you get chaos. We have famous cases in history, as for example the Weimar Republic [in Germany between 1918 and 1933], which fell apart, among other, because of the organization of its political institutions. Of course, that was not the only reason, many historical and political factors were also at work, but it also failed because they were unable to create effective political institutions. Therefore, that is really an obsolete and dangerous argument.
The international community has for years, both openly and indirectly favored and continues to favor, unfortunately few in number, multiethnic political parties. Do the efforts of the international community on "the development of multiethnic BH made up of two multiethnic entities" make sense if ethnicity is not abandoned as the basic principle of the Dayton constitution of BH?
Of course, they do not make sense. Either they should abandon the principle of the asymmetric ethnic confederation or respect the rules of democracy. But, if you already accept that in principle, then you cannot in this fashion suppress political parties and suppress their political activities only because you don't like them. You cannot say: "I don't like the SDA and therefore it cannot participate in the authorities or attempt to form a government". Either ethnic parties should be banned, if the internationals have the guts to do so, or their activities should be respected and there should be an attempt to somehow democratize them, "parlamentarize" them, thanks to their work in democratic political institutions. What am I trying to say? There are examples of political parties in Croatia that participate in democratic institutions, in the parliament and various parliamentary bodies, and those democratic institutions exert positive feedback on the internal structure and nature of those parties. They are becoming more democratic, more "parliamentary", maybe even more civilized. In Croatia there was a typical example of the Croatian Party of Rights (HSP). It was an extremist rightist party that advocated and used all sorts of action, including violent and extra-institutional modes of action. My impression is that, especially since the 2001 elections, the party has obviously become more moderate in its political activities. For example, in recent attempts to violently overthrow authorities in Croatia, and there were several of them, in several waves, the HSP took a much more moderate stance than the HDZ and failed to make any extremist or radical actions. I am convinced that ten to twelve years spent in the Parliament have influenced that party, made it abandon extremist positions and adopt a more moderate, still rightist, but moderate position which is acceptable from the point of view of parliamentary democracy. Therefore I am convinced that ethnic parties must and can do the same in such societies. For example, there are Scottish, Welsh, even Irish nationalist parties. They are ethnically homogenous and obviously must stay that way until certain ethnic problems exist. But the real issue is how they act, whether they recognize the state and system, or whether they reject them. If they reject the state and the system, and democracy, then their activities should be limited and they should be outlawed. If on the other hand they do recognize the state and the system, then their activities should be legal and they should be allowed to act within the institutions of the system.
Yes, for example recently the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg rejected the ban on activities of national political parties in Bulgaria, according to which...
The political party of the Turkish ethnic minority was banned. That is simply one of human rights, civic political rights, to organize a group on that basis.
However, keeping in mind, on the one hand, the power and role of the international community in BH and the proclaimed goal of building of a multiethnic BH, with two multiethnic entities, on the other hand, would a creation of an electoral system that favors multiethnic parties be legitimate? For example if only parties with multiethnic lists of candidates were allowed to participate in the elections?
No, absolutely not! Political parties that are legally registered must be treated absolutely equally by the legal system of a state. That means that election rules and laws must not favor any particular type of political parties. Naturally, there are some deviations, for example "female quotas" in BH, but that's another problem.
I think that what you've just said applies to states without a high representative that are not under more or less open protectorate such as BH. Would such a solution be acceptable as a part of a package of the protectorate for a limited time, given that the High Representative frequently with his decisions, very directly, for example by dismissing elected officials, modifies election results?
I believe that it would make much more sense and would be much more acceptable, if that's where we're going, if all the democratic political institutions were suspended and a pure, open protectorate introduced instead. Local political parties, parliament, government, anyone, have no business there... All authorities would be vested in the international governor, or whatever that's called. But the international community has come to BH with a program of post-conflict democratization whose important parts are elections and democratization and I believe that it cannot apply different standards from other countries regardless of the ethnic composition of BH. In principle, if other democracies apply certain rules for setting up and activities of political parties, BH must not be any different. If it is believed that in BH there are no conditions for democracy, for any reason, then the country should become a true protectorate. It seems to me that this is the worst possible solution. BH is neither a protectorate, nor a democracy in which political factors are free to act and are responsible for consequences of their positive and negative political actions.
Is there an electoral model that would satisfy at least a minimum of in the sense of democratic principles while at the same time helping resolve, above all, ethnic problems that plague BH?
There are various versions of the model of consociation [consensus based] democracy, typical for plural societies intersected by various divides, religious, political, social, cultural, any sort of division, it need not be only ethnic. For example the Netherlands and Austria were considered for such societies for a while. They are both ethnically homogenous, but suffer from other sorts of divisions, and then it was accepted that that type of democracy would be applicable. Or consider Israel. There, everyone is a Jew, but with very different degrees of religious conviction and practice. A necessary part of such a model is proportional representation, pure proportional representation. No other election system would be acceptable in that case. But a sensible, simple model for proportional representation should be applied. BH can be divided into several electoral districts that would correspond to one, two or three cantons, with a sensible election census that would allow as just as possible political representation, but would still not result in representatives of 20 political parties in the parliament. Therefore, a proportional election system (first past the post system would be totally unacceptable) and consociation democracy. It must be simple, respect the principle of just political representation, but at the same time guarantee reasonable concentration of political forces, where the number of political parties with representatives in the parliament would be larger than three, but would also not exceed six or seven.
It seems that after the decision of the Election Commission about compensation seats, we'll have as many as 17 parties on the Federation parliament.
That's a catastrophe, what else!
What is your opinion regarding the fact that after the imposed constitutional amendments ethnicity of future ministers, government members in entity governments, is determined in advance?
Right, and obviously that has nothing to do with election results. Some sort of majority in parliament should form a government and ministers should reflect that majority. Look, I think that that is even sillier than the election law. I would allow the majority in the parliament to set up governments and then we'll see how far they would get. For example if the SDA were to put together a government, and I think it would be honest to give them a chance to form a government, we'd see who they would put into such a government. If they were a responsible political party, regardless of them being an ethnic Bosniak party, I am sure that they would avoid forming an ethnically clean government.
Given the role and achievements of the international community in BH so far, I'd be curious to know whether you think that the problems we're discussing are large, serious but temporary difficulties in the functioning of the BH state, or whether this is, unfortunately, a lasting problem?
It is hard to give an answer to that question, and you know very well why that is so. I think that BH differs from a series of cases of post-conflict management because in this case we don't have a construction or reconstruction of a democratic political system after, for example, a long totalitarian rule, a Communist regime. In BH we have a reconstruction of a state, and that is usually much more difficult than a reconstruction of a democratic system. In order to set up a state, there must exist a fundamental consensus, both of its citizens and its ethnic groups. The problem in BH is that in 1992 you had a majority support for independence, but it unfortunately excluded one, large, ethnic group. I wish there was majority support for independence in all three main, or as we like to say constituent, ethnic communities. If such majority support were secured in 1992, there probably would not have been a war. But majorities and minorities change. Therefore, I believe that smart policies, and especially successful [economic] development could secure both civic and ethnic majority support for the BH state given in international context [sic]. When that support is secured, I think that many problems will be solved.
What is your greatest criticism of the involvement of the international community in BH since the Dayton Agreement?
A fundamental mistake was made in the construction of BH on the basis of two entities. I think that BH should have been organized as a federation of several cantons, based on ethnicity, or at least three entities. I don't see how now something could be changed, but that was a fateful decision. First, because it put the Republic of Srpska in a favored constitutional and institutional political position on the basis of principles that are deeply morally unacceptable. We know how Srpska was created as a state within the state, how it was created within present borders. On the other hand that creates strong resentments among Bosniaks and Croats, who do not accept that and demand at least equal status, as for example Croats do. Bosniaks, on the other hand, reject all of that. Therefore, I think that such a construction of an asymmetric confederation is the basic problem in BH. Unfortunately, I don't see how that favored status could be annulled now and Srpska be, figuratively speaking, sucked into the Federation BH that would include everyone, instead of only Croats and Bosniaks.