SDA President Bakir Izetbegovic‘s speech about left-wing parties can also be understood as an invitation to SDP to form a coalition with his party. This is not surprising given the results of the last General Election, as well as the expected results of the upcoming General Election.
In the 2018 elections, the SDP was the third-placed party in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) and therefore had the opportunity to be part of the government with the SDA at the state and entity level, as well as in certain cantons. At that time, shortly after the elections, the SDA first offered the SDP to be in the ruling coalition, which this party refused.
These two parties were in a coalition from 2010 to 2014, and some believe that this is the reason why the SDP lost the elections in 2014. After that, the officials of this party emphasized and promised that this coalition would not happen again, having learned from bad experience. The rejection of SDA’s offer from four years ago is also a consequence of the aforementioned. However, some in the SDP, primarily those in the Tuzla Canton (TC), were of the opinion that this coalition, at least in this canton, should be repeated. Internal party disagreements caused an additional split in the party – part of the membership in the TC came forward and founded a party, the Social Democrats (SD).
DF, unlike SDP, accepted to be in power with SDA. It is likely that the SDP will be able to be in power with the SDA even after these elections. From Izetbegovic‘s address at the party meeting in Tesanj on August 20th, it is possible to conclude that he is also aware of this. That is why it is not surprising that he has already sent a message to the left-wing parties, and this primarily refers to the SDP. Such messages were previously sent after the election, but now also before the start of the official election campaign. They are not random and they are not unfounded. The parties already conduct extensive polling, which is the case before every election, and can estimate the possible outcome of the election.
That is why the president of the SDA criticized, as he stated, the leftist, but also called on them to cooperate.
“We have always offered outstreched hand to leftists. Come to power with us, come to the coalition, let’s negotiate together, come in to defend BiH. But they evade. They want us to make a mistake somewhere, for me to go to Neum, so that they pressure me, so that they persuade me, so that they break me, so that they make some elections based on that. They don’t defend the country in Neum. That want some mistake, that something goes wrong, so that they can win the elections. They will have to work together with us to defend Bosnia. We will have to define those red lines together, but before that we will have to defeat them. We have to win and then they will enter the front together with us,” concluded Izetbegovic.
It would be simpler for the SDA if the SDP were in power with it, than if it were forced to form a coalition with several parties, in which there is always a greater possibility of non-functioning, and therefore the collapse of the parliamentary majority, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
