The political ball in our country, especially within the ”Eight”, is seriously tangled after the SDP, as they claim, due to a kind of betrayal and behind-the-scenes actions of certain coalition partners, was left without a single delegate in the House of Peoples of the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).
There were sharp divisions in the ”Eight”, and SDA found itself in a realistic position to be a key political force in the government at the level of the Federation of BiH (FBiH). In the meantime, the HDZ BiH also changed its seemingly principled position that it would not talk to the SDA about the formation of the government and started talks with that party. The possibility that the government of Prime Minister Fadil Novalic will remain for another technical mandate is not ruled out.
SDA President Bakir Izetbegovic commented on the new positions in the formation of the government in an interview.
”I don’t know if it’s the earthquakes or if it’s simply a normal process of electing the president and vice president of the Federation, I’d say it’s the latter. Where are we? We are in a process of maturing, in fact, understanding reality. Why do some forces, which were strongly against the Covic-Dodik combination, now agree to go into a coalition with them, not only agreeing, but doing them a favor? The SDP delivered a fourth hand in the House of Peoples of the BiH Parliament to Dodik. Why is it being done in such a way? Well, because they are a fact. We can like or dislike each other in politics, but the fact is that Serbian voters, the Serbian people, have their representatives in BiH, as well as Croats, that there are also leftists living in BiH, people who want a civil state and those who do not want a civil state and all important actors, all important factors must participate in the formation of the government.
When it comes to the Federation, one cannot do without SDA, it is the strongest in the House of Representatives, and in the House of Peoples, it represents the strongest Caucus, the Bosniak Caucus. One cannot do without HDZ BiH. It is somewhat weaker in the House of Representatives, twice as weak, but in the House of Peoples, it has a controlling position in the Croatian Caucus of deputies. The smallest and least demanding to win is the Serbian Caucus of deputies because there are thirty times fewer Serbs in the Federation than Bosniaks, but here, that part is controlled by SDP. So, those are the three parties that need, as High Representative Christian Schmidt said, to come to an agreement. It is futile to try to bypass any of those three parties,” said the SDA leader.
When asked if he is ready for serious talks with SDP about the formation of the government, he said:
”Always! I had three serious meetings with Niksic, where I offered him for us to create a pro-Bosnian bloc. We spoke recently on the phone and so on… I am very much in the mood for it, but it is necessary to have an answer from the other side. I’ve been offering that pro-Bosnian bloc for a long time, it’s not this moment when, here, everyone united against the SDA. For five years I have been talking about the fact that the only way to achieve balance in BiH in relation to the obvious Dodik – Covic coupling, the only real answer is the pro-Bosnian bloc, which has 60 percent of the hands in the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH (PABiH).”, Radio Sarajevo reports.
E.Dz.
