Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Federacija Bosne i Hercegovine, ?????????? ????? ? ???????????) is one of the two political entities that compose the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the other entity is the Republika Srpska).

Institutions

There is a President of the Federation, and two Vice-presidents thereof, just like in Republika Srpska, the incumbents of which regularly rotate. The current president is a Croat, Niko Lozan?i? of the HDZ party, whereas both the Bosniak (Sahbaz D?ihanovi?) and Serb (Desnica Radivojevi?) Vice-presidents come from the SDA party.

Related Topics:
Niko Lozan?i? - HDZ - Sahbaz D?ihanovi? - Desnica Radivojevi? - SDA

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The Cabinet has 16 members with carefully delineated nationality quotas. There are 8 Bosniak, 5 Croat and 3 Serb ministers in the current Government.

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The present Prime minister is a Bosniak, Ahmet Had?ipa?i? of the SDA.

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The Parliament consists of two houses, the House of Representatives and the House of Peoples. The House of Representatives is an elected body of 98 MPs, whereas the House of Peoples consists of representatives delegated by the cantonal parliaments.

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Interestingly, a number of institutions in the Federation still function under the 'componental' system; there is a Croat postal system and a Bosniak postal system, a Croat telecom and a Bosniak telecom, a Croat army component and a Bosniak army component; however, recently many systems have been merged into one single public company, eg. the pension system or the public broadcasting company of the Federation. Each of the cantons also has broad-ranging authorities, such as having its own courts and police forces.

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Federation currently has its own entity police force. Police systems including entity ministries of security of both entities are to be united by 2010 into a new state-level Ministry of Security and entity level police forces are to abolished and replaced with state level police force under regional control.

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Armies of both entities are now under the control of a new state-level Ministry of Defence. Entity armies are to be united by the end of the 2005 and entity-level Ministry of Defence and their armies are to be abolished by January 1, 2006.

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