BIRN – Dragan Covic, the Croat member of the Bosnian Presidency and leader of the Bosnian branch of the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZBiH, on Thursday slated the recent agreement concluded in East Sarajevo on the EU coordination mechanism, from which he said Bosnian Croats were excluded.
The meeting involved the Bosniak member of the Presidency and leader of the [Bosniak] Party of Democratic Action, SDA, Bakir Izetbegovic, and the President of Bosnian Serb-dominated entity, Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik.
“The problem is not that such a meeting was organised, but the fact that it has led to the approval of an official document,” Covic said, complaining that Croats were marginalised during the talks.
“The problem is that somebody thought to speak in the name of the Croats,” Covic said, noting that this should not have happened when such an important measure as the coordination mechanism – one of the key measures sought by the EU before granting candidate status to Bosnia – is concerned.
During the press conference, Covic also said relations between the HDZBiH and SDA, which are coalition partners in the State Council of Ministers and in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the bigger of Bosnia's two entities, had deteriorated. “We have a government which is not serious,” Covic warned.
However, Izetbegovic responded by calling talk of a crisis “artificial”.
“We need to work together to find a solution to strategic issues of this country and we need a strategic partner to cooperate with us on that,” Izetbegovic told the Mostar-based Dnevni List on Wednesday, arguing that the starting point of the current crisis was disagreement over a new law on gambling proposed by SDA members in the Federation entity.
Lejla Ramic Mesihovic, an expert on EU issues from the Foreign Policy Initiative, a think tank in Sarajevo, told BIRN that Covic's reaction reflected “the political culture which has developed in Bosnia”.
She added: “When you have to decide on systemic changes like the coordination mechanism, excluding parties that have power in the legislative or executive branches is always problematic.
“These are power games that arise from grey zones inside our current constitution … people get angry if they are not involved [in key decisions]”, Ramic Mesihovic continued.
“I'm surprised to see that again institutions are being neglected and that party elites have been consulted as those who have real power in this country,” she concluded.
During the last months, HDZBiH and SDA have also failed to agree on a solution for reforming the electoral statute of the city of Mostar.
Despite assuring that an agreement is close, the two parties have not agreed on reform and, if no deal is found, Mostar will for the second time in a row be the only Bosnian municipality not to organise local elections on October 2.
On Tuesday, US ambassador Maureen Cormack and British ambassador Edward Ferguson renewed calls for the SDA and HDZBiH to find a solution for the dispute over Mostar.
“HDZ BiH and SDA are most responsible for the mess that Mostar is in at the moment … [Izetbegovic and Covic] are the heads of their parties – and it is their job to lead,” the two ambassadors wrote.
(Birn)
