We read SDA’s dissembling response to the United States’ criticism of the Bosniak caucus’s blockade of the BiH House of Peoples (HoP). Here is our reply.
We will start with the United States’ position on the BiH Constitutional Court. The United States has been one of the Court’s strongest defenders, especially within the international community. We have strongly opposed the removal of the three international judges from the Court as well as the introduction of ethnic voting into the Court’s decision-making processes. We still do, and we have made this clear both privately and publicly. We understand the core of the issue as it relates to the BiH Constitutional Court, and we understand that attacks on state functionality, from whatever quarter they come, are irresponsible and dangerous. SDA leadership understood that once, too.
Our October 9 statement was clear that U.S. disappointment extended to the entire Bosniak caucus, which is led by SDA. We explicitly referenced SDA because SDA is, as it is fond of reminding everyone, the largest Bosniak party in BiH, and because one of its delegates in the HoP is the Chair of the Bosniak caucus in that body. Nonetheless, if SDA would like additional clarity from the United States, we are happy to provide it: the delegates from the Bosniak Caucus – those from SDA, DF, SBiH, and NiP – have acted irresponsibly, and to be crystal clear, their behavior – blockading state-level institutions – is anti-Dayton. The United States has made this point in the past when others engaged in similar behavior. The Bosniak caucus of the HoP does not get a pass on anti-Dayton behavior because of the ethnicity of its members.
Unfortunately, we feel it necessary to review the BiH Parliamentary Assembly legislative process because SDA’s statement raises the specter of the SDS-proposed legislation becoming law should it pass the HoP. SDA and its allies in the Bosniak caucus know this is not true. A law adopted by the HoP must subsequently be adopted by the House of Representatives (HoR). There is no majority for the SDS-proposed legislation in the HoR, let alone the necessary majority from among the Federation of BiH HoR delegates that is also required for its passage. Again, the members of the Bosniak caucus in the HoP know this. Frankly, we suspect SDS understood all this when it introduced the legislation but went ahead because it wanted to score political points with its constituents. The legislation was, to put in bluntly, dead on arrival.
This raises the question, what exactly is the Bosniak caucus defending against if there is no prospect of the SDS legislation ever becoming law? Certainly, not the anti-state political forces SDA claims to fear because in this instance those forces lack the strength to adopt the legislation. SDA’s claim that it is too dangerous to even debate the legislation is ludicrous. Legislative bodies in democracies around the world debate bad legislation, even unconstitutional legislation, all the time, and then they vote against it. What SDA is doing is clear. SDA and the members of the Bosniak caucus have chosen to blockade the HoP to score cheap political points by falsely presenting themselves as defenders of BiH and its state-level institutions from, in this case, a phantom menace.
The cost of the Bosniak caucus’s cynical ploy has been to prevent regular legislative business from occurring when the country has an enormous legislative agenda of EU-related reforms it must adopt. That is bad enough, but it is not the worst of it. This group has chosen to posture as defenders of BiH and its institutions while damaging them, a stunt that empowers the forces aligned against BiH. We are not surprised when parties and politicians seeking to dismantle BiH engage in activities undercutting BiH institutions, but it is shocking and saddening when a party and politicians that claim their top priority is to secure BiH’s future engage in anti-Dayton behavior.
