Our party reacted to Dragan Čović’s statement that SDA and HDZ have been working for months to relax relations between Bosniaks and Croats.
Our party said that “SDA and HDZ are building an ethnically divided state under the guise of relaxing relations.”
They also stated that “the relaxation of relations between Croats and Bosniaks is a phrase that Čović and Izetbegović have been using for years as a political framework in the stages of negotiations between the SDA and the HDZ on government and the distribution of public goods that are treated as loot”.
They point out that in practice, relaxation does not mean solving problems, but a temporary harmonization of political interests around the government, budget and institutional control, while key open issues are systematically postponed.
“We can see the results of their relaxation in Mostar, Stolac… The question is what they are up to this time. Does the relaxation of relations ultimately mean the quiet resuscitation of political projects like Herceg-Bosna, in the institutional sense. In this context, HDZ and SDA relations are often relaxed precisely through processes that lead to territorial and institutional segmentation: Hrvatske pošte, EP HZHB, Šume Herceg-Bosna, HT Eronet and RTV Herceg-Bosna are just some examples of rounding off ethno-institutional space. It is extremely hypocritical to say that Herceg-Bosna will never be created, when it has already been created during the thirty-year so-called relaxation of relations between the HDZ and the SDA. Perhaps the relaxation in this case also means a megacanton, as SDA vice-president Haris Zahiragić announced just a month ago.
Our party claims that at the same time in Mostar, for years, they worked on the jubilee pre-election political tightening of relations, boycotts behind the scenes agreements.
“Bosniaks in Herzegovina are not only majorized, but in many areas they also face discrimination, especially through the problem of non-respect of the principle of parity and non-representation in administrative bodies, which is often rightly pointed out from Stolac, Čapljina and Mostar.
Therefore, the real relaxation of relations cannot be a political agreement of the elites, but only the consistent implementation of European standards: the rule of law, equality and non-discrimination.
This implies the implementation of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. relaxation, then joining the EU is the best solution, a process that they skilfully avoid because, among other things, it implies – an independent judiciary,” concludes the reaction of Our Party.
