The meeting between the leaders of the three main ethnic parties who won the 2018 General Election and their announcement that a government will likely finally be formed by the end of March is no step forward since Bosnia has lost a lot of time on unnecessary discussions on the issue, political analyst Almir Terzic told N1 on Thursday.
“We have lost five months on talks on when we will get (a Council of Ministers), if we will get it, who will be in that future government, all while Bosnian citizens are leaving the country, beginning to hate it,” said Terzic, adding that Bosnians are “in total hopelessness.”
EU officials have been urging Bosnia to finally form a new government following the October 2018 General Election so the country can continue implementing the necessary reforms that would bring it closer to EU membership.
RELATED NEWS
The leaders of the main Bosniak, Croat and Serb ethnic parties in the country met in Sarajevo on Wednesday to negotiate how to resolve a deadlock in the process of implementing the results of the October 2018 General Election and form a new Council of Ministers (CoE), which is how Bosnia's government is called.
Bosnian Serb leader and current Chairman of the country's tripartite Presidency, Milorad Dodik, said it was a successful meeting, and the leader of the Croat Democratic Union (HDZ), Dragan Covic, said a new Council of Ministers is expected to be formed soon.
But Dodik also said that who the Council of Ministers Chairman will be was never an issue, nor was the problem the overall composition of the body. It was known for months that the CoM will likely be chaired by Zoran Tegeltija, a member of Dodik's Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD).
Dodik on Wednesday explained that the process was “put on hold the moment the issue of the Membership Action Plan (MAP) was raised” as an issue that takes priority over the forming of the Council of Ministers.
The MAP, an essential step toward Bosnia's NATO membership, is a divisive topic between the politicians of the three majority ethnic groups.
While the Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats want the country to become a member of the alliance, most Bosnian Serb politicians are against it.
According to Bosnia's political system, representatives of the three major ethnic groups in the country must reach a consensus in order for any decision to be made.
The Bosniak and the Bosnian Croat member of the Presidency, Sefik Dzaferovic and Zeljko Komsic, respectively, said in the past that they would not support the naming of Tegeltija if he does not tend to implement earlier decisions which paved Bosnia's way toward NATO.
Although Dodik, Covic and Bakir Izetbegovic, the leader of the Bosniak Party for Democratic Action (SDA) which Dzaferovic is a member of, announced on Wednesday a government will be formed soon, they said they did not reach an agreement on the MAP.
Terzic criticised the fact that Bosnia's MAP is not a condition for the forming of the Council of Ministers anymore after the meeting.
“In fact, they are using the issue to ensure better starting positions in the negotiations for distributing certain positions and mandates, as this is only a technical issue. If Bosnia would adopt the MAP today and activate it tomorrow, it doesn't mean that the day after tomorrow we will be a member of NATO, ” Terzic said.
Citizens do not trust anyone anymore, he said.
He said that after the elections “and the entire process of forming the government began, we saw dishonesty among a certain number of party leaders.”
“We saw how big the appetites of certain representatives are, who want to enter the government under any circumstance. And then people say, ‘why did we go voting again when nothing changed’,” he said.
He said that, now, any party is willing to enter the government with any other party.
“Until yesterday they were poking each other's eyes out, and now they are agreeing with each other. They are ready to enter the government no matter what, even if it would damage their own party,” he said, adding that this was “a very bad message for those few people who want to see Bosnia and Herzegovina as a prosperous country.”
Bosnia's politicians have created “fiefdoms” for themselves where they “are the masters of life and death,” according to the analyst.
“They are trying to keep the situation in Bosnia difficult through psychological pressure because that allows them to rule easier,” Terzic said. “And then people see the only escape from the situation outside of Bosnia's borders.”
“That would be my personal failure if I was a Bosnian politician. Obviously, it does not bother them,” Terzic said.
