The head of SDA, Bakir Izetbegovic, confirmed in an interview that he does not shy away from being a candidate for a member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the upcoming elections. He also revealed that he does not shy away from a coalition with all parties, even with SNSD.
In the interview, he said that he was twice a member of the Presidency of BiH and that he can be again if the party gives him confidence.
“But I don’t have, as our people would say, the strength, I’m not particularly eager and willing at all costs, and to return, I also do not shy away from that. But there is a risk, the campaign and everything else, and it is difficult to be the first man in the pro-Bosnian bloc and the Bosniak corpus. Let SDA decide what is best, with me, with what they have and what they know, or with some new face, new energy, and some new ideas, and I remain with SDA until the end.”
Denis Becirovic is, I think, the only person who should be my opponent for the Bosniak member of the Presidency of BiH, said Izetbegovic.
“Maybe someone else ambitious will join, but I think that the Coalition of the Three will gather again around Becirovic, and SDA should not allow to have 11 rivals. At that time, I had 11 domestic actors and four international ones, for reasons I don’t know. I think it was ‘We can’t remove Covic, we like him, we can’t remove Dodik, let’s remove the Bosniak. Let’s make some new Bosniak constellation which will relax relations with Dodik and Covic, which will relax them, but only poured oil on the fire, but I think that now it will not be the case.”
Speaking about coalitions with other parties, the SDA leader stated that SDP is the second party after SDA, and they are a fact; they should not be ignored.
“They represent the leftist sector, and whether we will enter into a coalition with them, I don’t know, but we will not reject anyone. We refer to parties like DF, SBiH, and NES for a time… I insisted on the Four, but I got a strange answer from Komsic that there is no Four. It surprised me a little. I would like to work with such parties that oppose such policies.”
We do not reject any parties except those who strike at BiH, said Izetbegovic.
“We do not even reject SNSD as a party, but we reject Dodik. SNSD without Dodik will be a different party; it will resemble SNSD from 20 years ago. Of course, we prefer SDS and PDP; we have experience with them.”
