The nxt two days may be the most consequential in Bosnia's post-war history. I've written extensively about what I've called the @OHR_BiH's blood quantum elxn law but I want to really spell it out for a non-specialist audience; what's going & why it's so dangerous. [LONG 🧵!]
First, understand that Bosnia already has the most complicated & decentralized constitutional regime in the world. Moreover, nearly every major public office (& administrative post) is, in practice, staffed according to a rigid ethno-sectarian key. 
This Byzantine system is the product of the U.S.-brokered Dayton Peace Accords which ended the Bosnian War. Annex 4 of the DPA serves as Bosnia's constitution. As such, the document is far more a power sharing agreement among warring factions than a functional social contract.
While the DPA may was a significant diplomatic achievement, a quarter century after its adoption it has proven to be incompatible w/ the basic human rights & international democratic norms which are embedded into its framework and/or which Bosnia has subsequently ratified.
Specifically, there are 8 major unimplemented rulings by the Bosnian Constitutional Court & the European Court of Human Right (ECHR) - & a 9th one likely coming the nxt few mos - which concern various facets of Bosnia's constitutional regime which were deemed discriminatory.
Taken in sum, all of these rulings say one thing: Bosnia's existing constitutional regime does not afford basic civil or democratic rights to large portions of its populace & must be brought in line w/ European (& i.e. EU & Council of Europe) standards of parliamentary democracy.
So, what's the problem w/ implementing these rulings? Well, the current Bosnian constitutional regime is designed in such a way changes from w/in the system are extraordinarily difficult bc they've delivered vast amounts of power to relatively minor political actors.
This is best observed w/ the main Croat nationalist party, the HDZ which t at the last elxns won 9% of the national vote & 14% of the vote in the FBiH entity where most of its supporters live. The Bosnian elxns regime translates such modest results into sweeping mandates.
Following the 2018 elxns, the HDZ, functionally, shut down govt at both the entity & state level for 4 yrs. While a new state level govt was formed, it has passed virtually no major decisions. A FBiH govt was never even formed & w/ the govt from 2014 (!) continuing in a caretake
Why did the HDZ shut down govt? Of the aforementioned 8 constitutional rulings, the HDZ wants to implement one & only one, the so-called "Ljubic case" which concerns the specific Q of seat allocation in the upper chamber of the FBiH assembly. ba.boell.org/en/2018/09/30/…
It's an extremely technical ruling but it's set off a struggle btw those who want Bosnia to have a political regime wherein both govt is divided along sectarian lines & so too is the actual voting process (i.e. HDZ & their Serb nationalist partners in the secessionist SNSD)...
...& those want to use the the other 7 constitutional rulings + the EU & NATO accession processes to reform Bosnia's constitutional regime in line w/ the liberal-democratic standards & norms found in, essentially, every other functional constitutional democracy in the world.
Enter the @OHR_BiH: the apex arbiter of the DPA w/ expansive extra-constitutional powers that allow it to impose laws, dismiss elected officials, even change Bosnia's state symbols, as a previous High Representative did in 1998.
The U.S. & EU spent much of the last 2 yrs facilitating a major elxns reform process in Bosnia. It was mired in controversy & eventually failed, as I wrote about below. Following the last round, the HDZ attempted to halt the country's elxns altogether. newlinesmag.com/argument/in-th…
That eventually resulted in the @OHR_BiH using its extra-constitutional mandate (i.e. its Bonn Powers) to secure elxns funding & send Bosnia to its regularly scheduled Oct 2 polls. It was also seen as an explicit rebuke of the HDZ's obstructionist antics. rferl.org/a/bosnia-herze…
What followed was the unfolding of a normal elxns campaign w/ party's nominating candidates, beginning to tour the country & diaspora, rolling out slogans/policies etc. Then suddenly, last weekend, news began to trickle out the @OHR_BiH was going to impose a new elxns law.
In the middle of an in progress elxn campaign, the @OHR_BiH was going to make major changes to how the results were going to be implemented, specifically those in the FBiH upper chamber relating to the Ljubic case. A firestorm ensued. aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/24…
Every single pro-EU/NATO party in the country came out against the @OHR_BiH's move. All of the appellants in those 7 other constitutional cases came out against it too. NGOs, civil rights groups, constitutional scholars, the public - everyone was aghast. derstandard.at/story/20001376…
The controversy became especially pronounced once copies of the law leaked. The txt was seemingly explicitly designed not only to benefit the HDZ (& the secessionist SNSD!) but also to functionally disenfranchise thousands of voters in the process. istraga.ba/objavljujemo-d…
Worse, news quickly broke that the text of the law had not actually been drafted by the @OHR_BiH but the Croatian govt which had interfered in Bosnia's domestic affairs for yrs & had participated in the aggression vs. the country in the 90s. klix.ba/vijesti/bih/pr…
You may recall the bizarre story from a few weeks ago where the Kremlin-aligned President of Croatia attempted to condition Finland & Sweden's NATO accession on changes to Bosnia's elxn law. A example of Zagreb's obsession w/ Bosnia's domestic affairs. euractiv.com/section/politi…
Where Croatia's meddling in the U.S.-EU led elxn reform talks & the Fino-Swedish NATO accession process had failed, it would now seemingly succeed via the fiat of the @OHR_BiH. Bosnians, as you can imagine, have been bubbling over in outrage for a week.
News that the U.S. was strongly backing the @OHR_BiH's moves, w/ the seemingly tepid support from the UK, but categorical opposition from Italy, Germany & France only made the situation more charged. Now a regional story was taking on geopolitical dimensions.
In the last 24 hrs we've learned the High Representative intends to go ahead w/ his new law on Tues despite near universal opposition. Large protest rallies, led by a Romani community leader & a coalition of anti-nationalist parties are scheduled for tmrw.
https://twitter.com/JasminMuj/status/1551308254533128193?s=20&t=QmBowmO2HKXRoHtA94qaKw
Bosnians fear not only the imposition of a still deeper sectarian elxn regime than the existing model, they feel profoundly betrayed, above all by the U.S., but the international community more broadly. And those feelings are stirring ugly, painful memories from the 90s.
They also fear that the @OHR_BiH has fatally compromised by the integrity of the Oct general elxns & deeply strengthened the position of the HDZ which will now only push for still more radical sectarian demands; most likely the creation of a so-called "third entity".
The law & how it'll be imposed also threatens to precipitate an avalanche of rage in a country w/ astronomical unemployment, rampant inflation & which has been in the midst of a protracted Serbian-Russian-backed secessionist crisis which the U.S., EU & OHR have tepidly observed.
Still, despite near universal opposition within in Bosnia & significant opposition in key European capitals, the @OHR_BiH appears likely to thrust Bosnia - a country in which 100,000 were killed btw 1992-1995 - into a massive political crisis.
Under the threat of violence from nationalist militants (below), @OHR_BiH will cement what many consider an apartheid regime in the middle of Europe in the year 2022. It's a terrifying development for Bosnia & a chilling omen for countries like Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/JasminMuj/status/1550232546469785600?s=20&t=QmBowmO2HKXRoHtA94qaKw
After all, if this is what the West considers an appropriate democratic regime for a country only 27 yrs removed from Europe's first post-WWII genocide, what will they force Kyiv to settle for? Monday, Bosnians take to the streets to save what remains of their democratic hopes.☮️
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