The President of SDA, Bakir Izetbegovic, said at a press conference in Sarajevo that the result of the three-year mandate of the current government is the humiliation of both the state and the people, general stagnation and blockades, quarrels aimed at positioning for the next elections, the impoverishment of the people, the indebtedness of the state, depression, and uncertainty.
According to him, the Coalition of the Three got their chance thanks to “very harsh interventions by the international community.”
He emphasized that inexperienced people cannot handle the situation we have been facing for decades.
Bad assessments and failed political moves
“When it comes to assessments, the first catastrophic assessment was, ‘Dodik has changed, the SDA didn’t know how to deal with him, but the Coalition of the Three will.’ The next bad prediction was that the SNSD-HDZ axis would soften if given concessions. They gave away entire sectors, agencies, public companies, thinking they would win them over,” Izetbegovic said.
He added that they promised new negotiators would come, who would know better, who would know how to harness the SNSD-HDZ axis on the European path, on the NATO path, “and what we got was blockage and stagnation.”
“The next promise was meritocracy: the rule of competent, qualified, credible, experienced, capable personnel. And then we were astonished at who they appointed. And the people have slowly gotten used to these figures who are not capable of carrying the burden of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the Federation of BiH (FBiH). That is one of the main mistakes of the Coalition of the Three, poor personnel,” Izetbegovic said.
The SDA president also said they promised progress on the European path.
“The international community kept lowering the bar for them, and even that wasn’t enough. It is in total blockage,” Izetbegovic stated.
“Affairs have undermined the fight against corruption”
According to him, they promised a fight against corruption, “and then we saw what was happening with the Sky application, the links between politicians and drug cartels, and we witnessed the ‘Spenganje’ affair.”
“Three ministers in the Canton Sarajevo (CS) Government were arrested, taken away,” Izetbegovic said, among other things.
He also recalled that the Coalition of the Three parties promised they would “remove the SNSD with a bulldozer, erase them with a rubber.”
“When it comes to Milorad Dodik, he clearly cut some deals, made certain arrangements to save himself, his family, his godfathers, his businesses, his companies. He has given up, at least temporarily, on attacking BiH, withdrawing all those numerous laws in the National Assembly of Republika Srpska (NARS) for his own sake. Now, through brazenness and attacks on ambassadors and the international community, he is trying to repair that image, which he lost among the Serb corpus in BiH,” the SDA president said.
He says that “this country will not get back on its feet until Dodik definitely leaves politics, he must not remain the president of the SNSD, because he will be the boss of bosses and will continue doing what he is doing.”
“The verdict is absolutely clear, he cannot remain the president of the SNSD. There must be a rule of law in this country; that verdict must be enforced,” Izetbegovic emphasized.
He also commented on the changes to the election legislation in BiH, saying that there will be no transparent elections if the law is not amended.
He stated that the SDA will propose those amendments, adding that they want fair and honest elections.
Izetbegovic also said that the Constitution of BiH states that proportional representation will be applied in this country when it comes to filling functions and positions, from the state level, through the entities, down to the lower levels.
“We have those laws, but they carry no sanctions, they are not applied, so we are effectively witnessing severe discrimination, apartheid in RS, but also in parts of the Federation that were once ruled by Herceg-Bosna, such as Stolac, where people’s houses were demolished, where people were taken to camps, where they went through a Golgotha, where they were killed, etc. In Stolac, where Bosniaks make up 38 percent of the population, there is not a single Bosniak director, not a single board member, no one holds any position, while they make up about three percent of the posts,” Izetbegovic said.
He congratulated Zijad Krnjic “for his firm stance and insistence on enforcing the law.”
“That is, to stop the theft of funds from the Federation in favor of the RS, which has been persistently happening since Spiric gave us these percentages, where the Federation continually loses, through Viadukt, which Krnjic warns will be paid for with Federation money, not RS money. So that man should be listened to more carefully. Prime Minister Nermin Niksic called him a so-called expert. Nermin Niksic is an imposed, imposed, forcibly installed, unsuccessful prime minister of the Federation, who calls the man doing his job a so-called expert,” Izetbegovic said.
He added that the SDA stands behind Krnjic and demands that the law be applied, that the FBiH be given what belongs to it.
Izetbegovic on his candidacy: I have been in these races three times, I won twice, so I can run a fourth time
In response to a journalist’s question on whether he will run for the BiH Presidency, Izetbegovic replied that he must see “whether that race will be within the club of party presidents.”
“Everyone asks me and none of the other party presidents whether they will run. Will Niksic run, will Konakovic run, will Sabina Cudic run, will Covic run, then I will make my decision. I have been in these races three times; I won twice, so I can run a fourth time. I wouldn’t mind someone else doing it; it is a hard, big job, that campaign. I am at the disposal of my party, but let’s see who will enter that race, whether the party presidents will enter it,” Izetbegovic said.
Asked about the minimum wage in the FBiH, he said that the SDA would thoroughly and systematically ease the burden on employers as much as possible, and then raise the minimum wage accordingly, adding that it must be at least 1.200 BAM.
The SDA Vice President, Muamer Zukic, said that the SDA has worked on the issue of proportional representation of the constituent peoples and others and that they raised this issue through their members, parliament, delegates, and elected officials in the RS entity and in the FBiH entity.
“When it comes to the federal level, we have already taken a concrete step, and the Bosniak Caucus in the House of Peoples of the Federation Parliament has already submitted to procedure a draft law on proportional representation of the constituent peoples and others. I can say that there are five political parties there, that is, delegates coming from five political parties that hold a majority. These political parties hold a majority in both the House of Peoples and the House of Representatives, which indicates that this law could ultimately receive support,” Zukic said.
He added that this is a law that specifies the constitutional principle of proportional representation of the constituent peoples and others, which entails that the constituent peoples, Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, and others be proportionally represented in public institutions, administrative bodies, administrative organizations, and courts throughout the entire territory of the FBiH, at all its levels, the entity level, cantonal level, cities and municipalities, both in terms of appointments and in terms of employment, Klix.ba writes.
