Bosnia’s House of Representatives failed to adopt the 2020 state budget on Thursday after lawmakers of the ruling Bosnian Serb party voted against it because some of their demands had not been met.
The budget would have allowed the November local election to take place, which is why international officials have repeatedly urged Bosnian political leaders to adopt it.
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The 2020 local election has already been postponed from October 4 to November 15 for the same reason.
Lawmakers from the ruling Bosnian Serb party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), voted against the budget “because previous agreements regarding the budget and other issues have not been respected,” Nebojsa Radmanovic, the chairman of the lower house and SNSD member told reporters.
According to the ruling Bosniak Party for Democratic Action (SDA), and the left-leaning Democratic Front (DF), the reason for this is that the SNSD and the main Bosnian Croat party, the Croat Democratic Union (HDZ BiH), oppose the composition of Bosnia’s Central Election Commission (CEC).
“The SNSD and the HDZ will continue to challenge the legality of the Central Election Commission's composition by not adopting the budget,” SDA’s Adil Osmanovic said, adding that “it is questionable whether they want to participate in the elections held by this Central Election Commission.”
“Unfortunately, another attempt to destroy state institutions is on the scene. This time they turned against the Central Election Commission. They can not get over the fact that they can’t influence the composition of the CEC which was elected legally in the House of Representatives,” said DF’s Dzenan Dzonlagic.
CEC member Suad Arnatuovic told N1 that he was never optimistic about the issue and never believed that the budget would be adopted at Thursday's session or that it will happen until the deadline, July 21.
He called this a “criminal act” and called upon the Prosecutor’s Office to look into it.
“The criminal offence of denying the right to vote. No one, especially not someone who is an official, can deny people’s right to vote,” Arnautovic said.
He also argued that the composition of his institution is completely legal and that he is certain that this is also what the court will say.
“Here we have a completely wrong, deliberate placement of false news and the thesis that the election (of the CEC members) was illegal,” he said, accusing the SNSD and the HDZ of exerting pressure on the CEC and obstructing the adoption of the budget.
But MP Damir Arnaut has a different theory. He argued that this has nothing to do with the CEC but that none of the ruling parties want an election to take place at all.
“This is the first time the government is openly showing fear of elections,” he said, adding that the SNSD and the SNSD and HDZ, but also the SDA and the DF are afraid of the vote.
“This is because those four parties right now make up the government and their results are catastrophic, so, of course, they are afraid of elections and all four of them are trying to find justifications for it,” he said.
Meanwhile, a session of the country’s government, in Bosnia called the Council of Ministers, failed even to adopt the agenda of the meeting.
Prime Minister Zoran Tegeltija said the meeting failed because SDA’s Bisera Turkovic, the Foreign Affairs Minister, refused to approve Bosnian Croat nominations for certain positions in state institutions although they were “agreed on long ago” and accused her of not respecting previous agreements between the ruling parties.
