The leader of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bakir Izetbegovic, said on Friday that he would not allow the Croat HDZ BiH party to impose changes to the country's election law and make the formation of the new government of the Croat-Bosniak Federation entity conditional on those changes.
“The reform of the election law should not be tied to the formation of the Federation government,” Izetbegovic told reporters after a meeting of his party in Sarajevo.
He added that changes to the election law would take time and that the Federation entity government had to be formed as soon as possible to enable the continuation of reforms.
The precondition for that is that the HDZ BiH, in line with an agreement with the SDA, nominates its candidate for Federation president because that official is the only one with constitutional powers to nominate the entity's new prime minister and ministers.
Izetbegovic called on the HDZ BiH to honour the agreement with his party and unblock the process of government formation in the country based on the results of elections held back in October 2018.
He also said that the SDA would not allow the SNSD party of Milorad Dodik to become part of the Federation entity government.
Dodik made a demand to that effect last week, saying that only the SNSD, which is in power in the Serb entity of Republika Srpska, has the right to also represent Serbs living in the Federation entity, and that it should, therefore, be given the post of the Serb vice-president of the Federation entity and ministerial positions intended for Serbs in the Federation government.
Izetbegovic said on Friday that this would not happen as the SNSD had already gone back on some of the coalition agreements with the SDA.
The SDA has therefore also decided to block the appointment of the new head of the state-level Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA), a post for which Darko Culum, the current Serb entity police director considered to be unconditionally loyal to Dodik, has been nominated.
Izetbegovic indirectly explained that the new SIPA director would not be appointed until it was certain that the Bosniak candidate to be nominated by the SDA under the existing agreement would be appointed the head of the country's Security-Intelligence Agency (OSA).
