The Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)in the current mandate had the worst convocation in the last 20 years since there are four-year mandates in the legislative power. And this is not a platitude of opposition politicians, but relentless statistics point to it. The desperate mandate in the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH (PABiH) was helped by the executive power, which was elected by this legislative power.
The Council of Ministers of BiH proposed a record low number of laws, and the parliamentarians did not bother either. On the contrary, half of the mandate was spent in absolute idleness. Thus, the first regular session of the House of Representatives of the PABiH was held only on December 18th, 2019, one year and 12 days after the constitutional.
A turbulent mandate
As expected, the House of Peoples of BiH was constituted later, because delegates are elected indirectly, in February 2019 to be exact. The first regular session was held two weeks later, but the next session was not held until the second half of December. That’s how the first year of inactivity passed.
As soon as the situation stabilized at the end of 2019, three months later came the coronavirus pandemic, which was characterized by a balancing act between measures that prevented work and work, and vacations and work.
The period of moderate functionality of the PABiH ended in July 2021 due to the introduction of the so-called Inzko’s Law, i.e. the amendment of the Criminal Code which prohibits the denial of genocide, when there is a complete blockade of the work of this body. There was no work for months, and at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, work continued, but with most items on the agenda being dropped. Thus, the entire mandate passed in a balance between absolute inaction and very inefficient work.
Shamefully small number of sessions
The result of this failed four-year mandate in the PABiH House of Representatives is only 32 regular sessions (including the one to be held next week) and 13 emergency sessions, which is exactly twice as less regular sessions as in the previous convocation and more than double than in earlier convocations. For example, in the mandate from 2010-2014. 73 regular sessions were held, and the mandate before that had 83 sessions. What is additionally “eye-catching” is that at the beginning of this millennium, the same number of regular sessions were held in two years as in the current four-year mandate.
The situation is no better in the PABiH House of Peoples either. In the current mandate, there were 25 regular sessions (including the one announced for the next week) and 12 emergency sessions was reached in this House, which is 17 regular sessions less than in the previous term. For example, in the mandate of 2002-2006 63 regular sessions were held in this House, and in the mandate before that which was a two-year mandate, the number was same as the one now in four years.
In this mandate, only one joint session of both houses of the PABiH was held, although in previous mandates there were at least four, and in the mandate of 2006-2010 even 18
Sessions often pointless
In addition to the quantity of sessions being very embarrassing, there was also a decline in quality. The sessions often discussed nonsense, such as, for example, a statement on the budget for one of the previous years, a statement in the second reading on proposals that were several years old, and thanks to the proposals and initiatives of individuals, the sessions gained some sort of meaning.
14 priorities from the opinion of the European Commission have not been fulfilled, and the main responsibility for this lies with the PABiH, which was obliged to work on changes to the law. So that BiH is not closer to the European Union (EU) today, but that was the case four years ago, and considering the increasingly frequent arrivals of diplomats from Brussels and Washington, who are trying to stabilize the situation after numerous blockades, one gets the impression that we are further from that goal than it was used to be the case.
Besides inefficiency, the mandate was also marked by numerous transfers from party to party. The ”transfer” season was opened by deputy Obren Petrovic, the former mayor of Doboj, who exchanged the SDS jersey with the biggest rival SNSD immediately after the election, which greatly increased the investments from the entity level for this city. After that, dissatisfied with the fact that the SDP did not go into a coalition with the SDA, deputy Enver Bijedic and a group of SDP members from the Tuzla Canton (TC) left that party and formed the Social Democrats.
Deputy Damir Arnaut, who found himself in the House of Representatives by the will of the party and not the voters, is leaving SBB, which gave him a compensatory mandate, and is moving to Our Party (Nasa stranka). Deputy Denis Zvidic, former chairman of the Council of Ministers, after several years of dissatisfaction with the work of the SDA, leaves this party and joins Narod i Pravda (People and Justice).
Deputy Jasmin Emric did not leave the party, but the A-SDA party with which he won the mandate no longer exists. A-SDA meanwhile merged with NBL to form the new party NES.
As for the House of Peoples, only delegate Zlatko Miletic is no longer a member of the party that appointed him. Dissatisfied with the work of the DF leadership, led by Zeljko Komsic, he left this party. In the meantime, Miletic did not become a member of any party until the elections were announced, when together with Damir Marjanovic formed a movement that will try to achieve results in these elections.
Until the end of the mandate, there is one more session of both Houses, and next week the delegates have the opportunity to improve the impression by abolishing the excise tax on fuel and thus enter the election campaign with at least one concrete solution that will “pull the wool over voters’ eyes“, but the general impression that is related to the entire mandate is: If only the next four years will not be like this.
