According to the plan of the project activities, the public discussion “The Upgrade of the Bosnian Constitution Would Enable Faster European Integration” was held on Friday, February 19, 2010, at 11 a.m. in the Leotar Hotel in Trebinje.

The preparation and organisation of the public discussion was realised with the assistance of our collaborator from Trebinje, Mr Radoslav Ivankovic, a journalist.

One of the reasons why Trebinje was planned as one of the destinations for holding of our project activity – public discussion is the geographical position of this city in Republic of Srpska. Trebinje is a city in East Herzegovina, the passive part of the centralised entity and is pretty far away from the centre of the entity. Therefore, the inhabitants of this city feel neglected by the central entity authority. They believe that such centralised system completely jeopardise the position of their local community, which jeopardise implementation of their basic rights having in mind the distance of Trebinje from Banja Luka.
The next reason for holding of the public discussion in Trebinje is insignificant number of returnees in South-Eastern part of Republic of Srpska. (These information were gathered through the realisation of the activities from other projects.)
Due to all these reasons, FTC believed that it is highly important to hear the opinions from this city since it is very homogenised environment, where the only reason for dissatisfaction of the population that is highlighted is poverty and inadequate position of the local community in the relation to the central authorities in order to gather the overall attitudes and opinions and creation of clearer picture of the relation between authorities and citizens regarding the constitutional reforms.

The speakers at this public discussion were Prof. Slavo Kukic, a University professor from Mostar and Mr Vehid Sehic, FTC President.
As on all previous public discussion, the speakers informed the participants about the basic aims of the project, the importance of the constitutional changes and their attitudes as the representatives of the civil society regarding additions and changes of the Bosnian Constitution, highlighting the sureness of its harmonisation having in mind the decision of the Court in Strasbourg in the case “Finci and Sejdic vs. the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
Although Mr Radoslav Ivankovic, our collaborator in organisation of this activity sent invitations to the representatives of all political options from this city at different levels of the authority, their turnout was not very good. Namely, only the councillors in the Assembly of the Municipality of Trebinje, i.e. the representatives of the opposition parties and independent candidates took part in the public discussion, while the representatives of SNSD-Milorad Dodik completely ignored the invitation. This points out the fact that the authorities in this city are not ready to discuss this topic and to publicly present their opinions or the attitudes of their political party.
After the introductory speeches, the participants took part in the discussion which lasted more that two hours. The presented either their personal opinions or the attitudes of their political parties, but there is no big difference between these attitudes since the general conclusion from the discussion is that the constitutional changes are not of the key importance for overcoming of the crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that the authorities at the highest level should deal with the economic situation in the country and economic strengthening of the country. Certain participants believe that the constitutional changes should not happen at all, since they serve to the political leaders to stay in power (which is the opinion of Mr Mijat Sarovic, the representative of the Association of children and parents with special needs).
The president of Democratic People’s Union (DNS), Mr Petar Ivankovic, emphasised several times that he is against any changes of the Constitution as long as the International Community is present in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He also believes that the priority of the authorities should be improvement of the economic situation in the country.
The attitude presented by the speakers – defining of the rights and position of the local community in the Constitution was absolutely supported by all participants as the change of the Constitution that is acceptable. Participants believe that they as the local community do not have any rights in Republic of Srpska, emphasising that the entity authorities even took the communal work since it brings the money, and social giving is given to the local community, but local communities do not have financial means for that.
Therefore, couple of hours long discussion was mostly about the position and problems of local communities in Republic of Srpska. Furthermore, participants indirectly supported the constitutional changes that FTC as the representative of the civil society is affirming through this project in the domain of the constitutional defining of a local community in order to provide it with more political and economic power.

If one compares the opinions from the public discussion in Trebinje with the ones from Livno, Prijedor and Bijeljina, they are mostly the result of failure to implement the return to this part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Therefore, Trebinje as an environment with only one ethnic group living there, they feel neglected by the central authorities. The participants emphasised the unemployment and the lack of economic development as the major problems they have unlike in the other cities where the public discussions were held, where some return is implemented, and where people of other ethnic groups live as well, where the participants emphasised the problem of discrimination and inequality of the constitutive peoples.
Therefore, FTC believes that the realisation of the public discussion and the radio show in Trebinje is highly important due to described situation but also it is highly important for Trebinje to hear different opinions and attitudes, particularly of the representatives of civil society and, as one of the participants in the public discussion said – to demystify the process of the constitutional changes and to inform the citizens what that process means and to what changes it should contribute.

Around 15 participants took part in the public discussion.

Regarding media attention, for this part of Herzegovina it was extremely good. Besides the journalist of Korona Radio, the journalists of two TV stations – Herceg TV and BN TV – reported about this event.

As the training material, participants were given booklet “The Upgrade of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina Would Enable Faster European Integration” – the work of the expert team; the bulletins from all previously realised events, and notebooks and pens.