Bakir Izetbegovic, the son of the founder of the main Bosniak party, Alija Izetbegovic, has been reelected as president at a party congress on Saturday in Sarajevo.
More than 1,200 members of the Party for Democratic Action, SDA, elected Izetbegovic to lead them for another four years.
The congress was attended by numerous local and international guests.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent a letter of support, telling the participants that he hopes the SDA will maintain the legacy of their founder and Bosnia’s first president and that Ankara will always support them.
“With its cultural and religious setup, Bosnia and Herzegovina is located in the heart of the Balkans and its security has always been of key importance to our country,” Cevdet Yilmaz, the vice-president of Erdogan’s party, who attended the congress in Sarajevo, read.
Turkey has always been behind Bosnia “and never left its brothers and sisters behind in any bilateral or multilateral platforms,” Erdogan wrote.
Despite great suffering, Bosnia made significant steps toward economic development, social reconciliation and integration in international institutions, he wrote. “I am convinced that one of the main architects of these successes of Bosnia was the SDA, which maintains the legacy of Alija Izetbegovic, and that it will continue to pursue the visionary policy of unification in the same successful manner.”
One of the greatest evils a country can be exposed to is the perception of social, political and religious differences as sources of animosities and division, he wrote.
“Differences should be perceived as an advantage and we should focus on maintaining them together,” he read, adding that it was up to politicians to lead this tendency.
The SDA, Erdogan wrote, followed this “constructive policy” and should maintain it in the future.
“In our thoughts, we support you on this path. I believe you will overcome all obstacles in the spirit of unification, togetherness and brotherhood,” Erdogan wrote.
Among the guests were the ambassadors of Turkey, Russia, China, Croatia, Egypt, Palestine, Hungary as well as representatives of Montenegro, Iran, Japan, Slovakia and Norway.
However, Semsudin Mehmedovic, one of the candidates for party leader at the last congress, said that the fact that Izetbegovic is the only candidate is “detrimental for the SDA.”
“They say there is no candidate running against him. We know how all leaders who had nobody running against them in the past were seen,” Mehmedovic said.
“It generates fear among party members. Everyone knows what the problem is but nobody has the courage to say it,” Mehmedovic said, adding that some of the changes in the SDA’s statute resulted in a “complete concentration of power” in the hands of the party leader.
“Little is being said about responsibility. We are going through a turbulent time and anyone who had the ambition to run for party president has given up in order not to complicate things further,” he said.
