IZBORNI ZAKON I SPOR OKO UNIVERZALIJA: POSTOJI LI HRVATSKI NAROD U BIH ILI SAMO HRVATI?
THE ELECTION LAW AND THE DISPUTE OVER UNIVERSALS CROATS, ARE THEY A SUM OF CITIZENS OR A SINGLE PEOPLE?

Summary/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?

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