Just when the Council of Ministers began holding sessions, a new blockade was created in the work of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), which has not held a regular session for almost three months now.
Namely, the last regular session of the Presidency of BiH was held on November 19th, 2020. More than 80 days have passed since then, without any regular session being held, which means that the abundance of materials, such as international agreements and other important documents within the competence of this institution has not been adopted yet, Klix.ba writes.
It is interesting that the vacuum in the Presidency coincides with the arrival of Milorad Dodik to the position of Chairman of the Presidency of BiH, which occurred on November 20th, 2020. In the entire course of his presidency so far, Dodik has not scheduled any regular sessions. Indeed, during the mentioned period, he held several special, mostly telephone sessions, which referred to burning issues, such as the engagement of the Armed Forces to resolve the migrant crisis and similar issues.
However, special sessions cannon replace regular ones, at which the Presidency of BiH considers the entire range of important acts for all spheres of BiH society.
It is important to consider the fact that Dodik spent part of this period in isolation when he was infected with coronavirus, but, even except for that period of twenty days that Dodik spent on treatment, there is still a question why the Presidency of BiH spent a remaining month and a half in a blockade.
A few days ago, the Bosniak member of the Presidency of BiH, Sefik Dzaferovic, in an interview for N1 television, when asked why there are no sessions, said that “there is no valid reason for not holding any regular sessions from November 20th until today.”
During a recent meeting with members with the BiH Presidency members, Ambassador of the United States (US), Eric Nelson, “called on members of the BiH Presidency to maintain their leading position in future steps towards faster implementation of reforms”, which should have encouraged the Presidency, but apparently, Dodik ignored this signal as well.
For a long time now, Dodik, in confrontation with the opposition, has created such an atmosphere, in which coming to the sessions in Sarajevo and the functionality of institutions is seen as a political failure of Serbian politicians, and the natural consequence is a quiet, but certainly targeted institution paralysis. If we keep in mind that the beginning of the blockade in the Presidency coincides with the unblocking of the Council of Ministers, it is obvious that Dodik’s tactic is not to allow all institutions to work properly. So when the Council of Ministers works, the Presidency does not, when the Presidency works, the Parliament is blocked, and so on. The unblocking of one institution is an “excuse” for Dodik for the international community, and the blockade of another one he gains political points in nationalistic circles.
However, such exhaustion prevents any serious reform momentum and harms citizens, especially those whose life problems await resolution in regular sessions, and it is certain that other political representatives and the international community bear part of the responsibility and have to take more decisive steps in order to end the mentioned blockade and allow institutions to breathe again.
