The session of the Constitutional Court of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was convened after the international community's High Representative to Sarajevo, Valentin Inzko, on Monday temporarily suspended last week's decisions by the Central Election Commission (SIP) to annul the election of Budimir, Kebo and Pudaric as the new leaders in the Croat-Muslim entity.
The Office of the international community's High Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina (OHR) said today that it was only within the remit of the Constitutional Court in the Croat-Bosniak entity to decide whether the election of the new government and leaders in the Federation was in accordance with the law and the constitution.
Political parties in an SDP-run bloc today welcomed the order from the OHR, as they said earlier that they would not abide by the decision from the SIP which annulled the election of their candidates.
The spokesman for the Croatian Democratic Union 1990 (HDZ 1990), Veso Vegar, said that the order from the OHR derogated the legal system of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The HDZ BiH and HDZ 1990 parties challenged the election of Budimir, Pudaric and Kebo, claiming that the SDP-led coalition ignored the will of the Croat electorate. Although a majority of votes from the Bosnian Croat electorate had been mustered by those two parties, they were not included in the new Federation government.
Nine Croat parties led by the two HDZ parties said that Inzko's order on the suspension of the Central Election Commission's decision was an act of turning the Federation into a Muslim (Bosniak) entity. They slam it as the introduction of a state of emergency in Bosnia and as an act of undermining the constitutional order.
They accuse Inzko of conducting a plan by a part of international policy-makers to commit "political ethnocide" against Croats, and have announced lawsuits to be filed with international judicial bodies.
Major Bosnian Serb parties today criticised the latest move from the OHR as an unacceptable intervention by Inzko which would deepen the crisis in the country.