The imposed changes to the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina Constitution brought last year by High Representative Christian Schmidt stipulate that a new government must be formed 30 days after the appointment of the president and vice president of the FBiH. That deadline expires at midnight.
When he imposed changes to the law and the constitution five minutes after the polls closed on October 2 last year, Schmidt said that he was doing it in order to unblock the FBiH, that is, to make it impossible for someone to block the formation of the government, as was the case from 2018 to 2022.
In practice, his imposed changes did not bear fruit in terms of appointing a new government. If he had not imposed changes, the government would have been formed a long time ago. So the problem is not solved.
The parliamentary majority in FBiH was agreed upon by two political blocs. One is gathered around SDP, NiP and NS (as many as eight parties), and the other around HDZ with the absolute omnipresence of that party.
However, that coalition has a problem because they lack the consent of one vice-president of FBiH for the appointment of the government, namely Refik Lendo from the SDA, who does not agree to sign without the participation of the SDA in the government. He bases his position on the FBiH Constitution, which states that the government is formed with the approval of the president and both vice presidents of the FBiH.
Given that today is the last chance to appoint a government within the legally prescribed period, a session of the House of Representatives of the FBiH Parliament is also scheduled. Lidija Bradara, as the president of the entity, sent the decision on the appointment of the government to the parliament, although Lendo did not give consent to that decision.
Therefore, the question arises as to what will happen today at the session with only one item on the agenda – the appointment of the government.
One option is that lawmakers will just debate and possibly propose various exit options, although each one leads to Schmidt.
One of the ideas is for the parliamentary majority to adopt some kind of resolution in both houses, by which they would invite Schmidt to impose a decision.
However, the key detail is whether the new decision would be permanent or temporary. If it is temporary, such a decision is not supported by all the G8 parties, such as SBiH and NES.
Therefore, the real question is whether Christian Schmidt even knows what he is going to do. His decision from October 2 last year did not yield results, and his time is running out and Schmidt is in the hot seat, which he overheated himself, in which a wrong move can undermine the credibility of OHR, Klix.ba reports.
