Bosnia is not developing relations with other countries, as none of the three Presidency members are ever travelling anywhere while other countries are trying to establish order here, Bosnia’s first Prime Minister after the war, Hasan Muratovic, told N1 on Thursday.
“Our first neighbours (Croatia and Serbia) have a very bad attitude and are doing a lot of things which are not in accordance with good neighbourly relations. We need to create a complete shift so we have more friends who ould lobby for u in the EU and other international organisations,” he said.
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Muratovic commented on a declaration of long-term goals the main Bosniak party in the country, the Party for Democratic Action (SDA), had adopted on Saturday.
The party said it wants to work toward, among other things, the establishment of a ‘Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina’ and the affirmation of a ‘Bosnian language’ as the ‘common identity of all of Bosnia’s citizens’.
Bosnia is according its Constitution, which is part of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, composed of two semi-autonomous regions – the Serb-majority Republika Srpska (RS) and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), mostly shared between Bosniaks and Croats. The entities are linked into a state by common institutions.
The state-level government is set up according to a power-sharing system between three majority ethnic groups, or ‘constituent peoples’ – Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs.
The SDA Declaration has caused an uproar among Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat representatives.
Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik said that it represents an attack on the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement which ended the war and on Bosnia’s constitutional setup, as the party wants to dissolve the RS.
Bosniaks want a state set up “on their own terms” he said, adding that Serbs “will not endure political torture.”
According to Serbia’s President, Aleksandar Vucic, changing the constitutional setup in Bosnia would produce “big problems.”
Muratovic said that it is fine that the SDA has long-term goals and ideals, but argued that “it was not the right time, during a period of tensions, to give it such significance.”
“Unnecessary problems and too strong reactions were generated,” he said, adding that Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik invited the representatives of all parties in the RS for a meeting in Belgrade.
This could result in “the further meddling of Serbia and its wish to achieve the goal of division (of Bosnia),” he said, explaining that both Serbia and Croatia have never given up on that goal.
“All of Europe is focused on citizens, there are no constituent peoples. It is the same in the US and in Canada,” he said, but argued that Bosnia’s setup “does not prevent us from building up a state of the highest level of civic rights.”
Muratovic also commented on the fact that Bosnia’s government has still not been formed, nearly a year after the election.
“For a year already, you can see that they (political leaders) are continuously communicating about things that are not producing any results. Nothing positive is happening,” he said, arguing that political leaders should reach a middle ground.
He also criticised High Representative – the foreign official named to oversee the implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement, currently Austrian diplomat Valentin Inzko.
“You can see that he is truly not very active, although he is here the longest. He is working in accordance with what those who named him are asking of him,” Muratovic said, arguing that this is why Inzko is not using the Bonn powers.
The so-called ‘Bonn powers’ enable High Representatives to impose or annul laws and fire public officials as high as presidents who violate the Peace Agreement, which also contains Bosnia’s Constitution.
“I don’t believe this will ever happen again. You can see that in every crisis situation the statements coming from the US Embassy, the EU and the OHR are the same. They are leading harmonised policies,” said Muratovic.
In order for things to improve, “other persons need to emerge” and lead the country, he said.
“People who create a crisis cannot solve it, but only deepen it. We need to wait for a new generation,” he stressed.
