SURVIVING THE PEACE The Struggle for Postwar Recovery in Bosnia-Herzegovina

home  ♦  about the blog ♦ the book ♦ the author ♦ buy the book  ♦  contact

Bosnia Update, Sunday, May 7, 2023
OHR Decree Compels Formation of Federation Government; Sebija Izetbegović Loses Credentials; Novalić Takes a Hit; RS Secession Threats 

The past month has been particularly turbulent in Bosnia-Herzegovina and full of news. The main news is that Thursday, April 27, High Representative Schmidt decreed a set of amendments to Federation law that unblock the obstacles to creation of the entity's new government. This is seven months after the October elections, and over eight years since the last new government was formed in the entity.

Between 2018 and now, the government appointed in 2014, headed by Prime Minister Fadil Novalić, remained in custodial capacity due to the refusal of the Croat nationalist HDZ party to allow a new set of ministers to take office. The HDZ was demanding that electoral regulations be modified to guarantee what they called "legitimate representation" which, in fact, meant an assurance that this Croat nationalist party's dominance would be enshrined in law. They never quite got what they wanted, and the Federation never got a new government, until the end of April.

See my previous blog for a description of what I called the "slow-motion dogfight" that characterized the inter-party struggle for power in the Federation. You'll also recall that on the night of the October 2 elections HR Schmidt decreed electoral laws that retroactively affected the results of those elections and displeased just about everyone. They were designed to clear away the HDZ's obstruction—but they left an opening for another party, in this case the Bosniak nationalist SDA, to prevent creation of a new government just as effectively.

The process of formation of the Federation's government starts with the designation of the presidency of the entity, including one Croat, one Serb, and one Bosniak. The dominant parties select one candidate from each ethnicity; in the present case, they were Lidija Bradara (Croat from HDZ); Refik Lendo (Bosniak, from the SDA), and Igor Stojanović.  Mr. Stojanović, a Serb, was selected by the non-nationalist "Trojka," that is, the three leading parties in the erstwhile "Osmorka" or Octet (eight) coalition, which has more or less fallen apart. Those three parties are the Social-Democrat SDP (of which Stojanović is a member), the center-right NiP, and the somewhat progressive NS-Naša Stranka (Our Party).

Ms. Bradara was chosen to be president of the Federation, with Stojanović and Lendo becoming the two vice-presidents. The next step was for the three officials to agree on a nomination for the prime minister of the entity, which would then be submitted to Parliament for approval.

Here is where everything stopped for almost two months. The only person proposed for prime minister was Nermin Nikšić, head of the SDP, and Mr. Lendo refused to accept Nikšić—in fact, to accept anyone as prime minister other than someone from his own party. He explained that the SDA was the recipient of the largest number of Bosniak votes in the October elections, and as such, must receive the position of prime minister. He asserted that any other outcome would be a violation of democratic principles. 

The fact that Nikšić is also a Bosniak was of no importance to Lendo. The SDA insists on equating itself with the Bosniak polity and brushing off the legitimacy of any other Bosniak-dominated parties. In this, it has inherited the HDZ's custom of insisting that it is the only legitimate representative of one ethnicity.

And Lendo's insistence that his party winning the most Bosniak votes means it should receive the position of prime minister sidesteps the fact that in the parliamentary system, it is not unusual for a coalition of parties to outnumber the party that has received a plurality of votes. Commentators not attached to the SDA/DF coalition (DF—Demokratska Fronta, headed by Željko Komšić) point out that the SDA is primarily concerned about losing its cushy jobs that afford so many perks to the prominent leaders and high cadre of that party. Such privileges are the bread and butter of the profiteer class in Bosnian politics, and the leading parties will go to great measures to entrench themselves in position.

In recent months the SDA has suffered several blows to its power, starting with the October defeat of Bakir Izetbegović, head of the party, in his bid for membership in the state-level presidency. Then, in recent weeks his wife Sebija has suffered loss of credentials and prestige in the Sarajevo University Clinical Center, the largest hospital in the country. Furthermore, Prime Minister Novalić (SDA) was finally convicted of a variety of crimes for his role in the shady purchase of ventilators for Covid a few years ago for an exorbitant sum.

About the two latter cases, see more below. But pressure has been strong on the SDA, the dominant party representing Bosniaks ever since before the war. Such pressure has prompted SDA leaders and spokespersons to call everyone in the Trojka and Bosniak opposition "traitors," and to wage a polemical fight with the international community, which it accuses of implementing apartheid in Bosnia, favoring the Croat and Serb nationalists, and creating a Bosniak enclave.

There are good reasons to criticize the role of the international community, principally for its failure to focus seriously on the structural problems created by Dayton. It periodically resorts to band-aid measures such as the decrees of October 2 and the recent one, or Inzko's 2021 law against genocide denial, which has not been enforced. Such decrees, often as not, make things worse rather than better. And when complications ensue after each decree, there seems to be no evident strategy beyond admonitions for the Bosnian politicians to get together and "work things out." But notwithstanding this, the SDA/DF coalition's attacks against international officials are clearly tendentious and self-serving.

In the event, Schmidt's recent decree quickly cleared away the obstruction and compelled the creation of the new government. It did this by making it sufficient for one of the entity's vice-presidents, rather than both of them, to agree with the president on the nomination of the prime minister. This made it possible for Bradara and Stojanović to override Lendo's obstruction. This is a temporary fix, but another component of Schmidt's decree is that it becomes part of the entity's constitution on May 1 of next year if Parliament does not work out its own resolution to the problem. The decree also allows for early elections in the event that the entity's president and vice presidents, together with Parliament, are not able to select a new government that all can agree upon.

On Friday April 28, the day after Schmidt's decree, the Federation House of Representatives voted in favor of Bradara's nomination 51 to 2, and Nikšić became the new prime minister of the Federation. The day was not without incident; several protest demonstrations took place then and in the week or so after the decree. Some were organized by the informal (unregistered) organization ReStart in Sarajevo and Tuzla, among other places; others were organized directly by the SDA. And some of the ReStart demonstrations were co-opted by the SDA.

The SDA's motives were clear: to mobilize the party's followers to reject the decree. Mr. Lendo declared the decree to be impudent ("bezobrazno"). A spokesman from DF called the event a "historical humiliation." And SDA inquired, rhetorically, whether the move was arranged as a result of conversations with the prime minister of Croatia—implying that, since the decree did not favor the SDA, it disproportionately favored the Croat nationalist HDZ, and thus must have been cooked up in Zagreb.

On one hand, it is probably true that Western diplomats take the leadership of Croatia more seriously than the likes of Dodik, Čović, and Izetbegović, because of Croatia's membership in the EU and its relative stability. But the SDA's conspiratorialist accusation is disingenuous, considering that the that party has been in coalition with the Croat nationalists for much of the last three decades.

Unlike the partisan demonstrations organized by the SDA, ReStart's protests appear to be the expression of people fed up with the international community's perpetual tinkering and experimenting with Bosnian politics in a superficial way, without ever solving things. Things never get solved because the Dayton political arrangement endures, enshrining an ethnic-based system that erases people's rights as individuals and their power to be represented as citizens with common needs.

One of the demands of these protestors is for the international community to compel action to implement the important findings of the European Court of Human Rights, which hold the Dayton constitution in violation of basic political rights that exist in EU member countries. These findings: Sejdić/Finci, Zornić, Pilav, and Pudarić, go back as far as 2009—with no result to date.

ReStart and other protestors are calling for the creation of a purely civic democracy to replace  Dayton's ethnocracy. For now, the cards are stacked against them not only because international officials don't care or are unable to go against the flow, but also because the grassroots of democratically-minded, anti-nationalist Bosnians and Herzegovinans are having a difficult time creating and sustaining a movement. Both of these factors will have to turn around before there can be significant change in Bosnia.

Meanwhile, members of the parties composing the Trojka (the mainly Bosniak parties leading the opposition to SDA/DF) hailed Schmidt's decree, saying it constituted a lasting clearing of obstructions and leading the way toward development of a civic democracy. That is probably a bit of an exaggeration. And one of the winners, Mr. Stojanović, carried on the hyperbole and called participants in the protest demonstrations "traitors."

As members of Parliament were voting to accept Mr. Nikšić as the new prime minister of the Federation, it came out that at least one member, representative Kenan Uzunović from Zenica, was offered a bribe to the tune of three million KM (cash in a bag) to vote against this. And outside, in the aftermath of the SDA-led protest demonstration, some participants physically attacked journalists and representatives who had voted to accept Nikšić.

I would not like to completely write off the possibilities of a positive outcome from HR Schmidt's action. There is, finally, a new government after all—and it may compare positively to the corruption-ridden previous one. Leaders from the Trojka have declared that they will endeavor to improve the lives of the citizens, fight corruption, promote investment, and halt the flight of young people from the country. We'll see if the new government's officials give these goals priority over their careers.

Sebija Izetbegovic's travails

Dr. Sebija Izetbegović, Bakir's wife, is a medical professor and director of KCUS—the Sarajevo University Clinical Center. An important member of the Izetbegović dynasty, she has previously held various political positions, as well as being director of another Sarajevo hospital before she came to KCUS.

Mrs. Izetbegović has been under investigation by the University Senate, headed by Rector Rifat Škrijelj, for quite some time in one of the most prominent cases of alleged diploma fraud in Bosnia. After more than two years, investigators were unable to find proof that she had passed the requirements to obtain her master's degree. She herself was unable to provide the necessary evidence. The investigation came to a head on March 6, when the Senate decided to annul Izetbegović's master's certificate.

Izetbegović's explanation of the missing proof was that she had kept her own records of her classes and papers, because she was aware of the possibility of records disappearing from the institutions in Zagreb and Sarajevo where she had studied. The Senate was not satisfied with this explanation, and toward the end of March that body also annulled Izetbegović's status as a regular professor in the medical department.

These measures brought into question Izetbegović's status as a doctor of medicine, since she no longer possessed a master's degree. Mrs. Izetbegović appealed the decisions and sued the university in municipal court. The Sarajevo Canton Administration for Inspections directed the university to remove her doctoral diploma, which it did on April 11. But a couple of weeks later, the municipal court in Sarajevo declared that Izetbegović's status as doctor must remain in place as long as her appeal is underway.

The case is going back and forth in a bit of a tug-of-war between the University Senate and Rector, on one side, and Mrs. Izetbegović on the other, with the municipal court vacillating. All in all, the University no longer considers her to have either a master's, a doctorate, nor a position as regular professor. Whether she will be allowed to continue as director of the hospital remains up in the air, as the courts continue to deliberate.

In any case, the succession of decisions against Mrs. Izetbegović contributes to the perception of an overall decline in the popularity and power of the dynasty.

Fadil Novalić takes a hit

In another strike at the SDA, in early April Federation Prime Minister Fadil Novalić was convicted in the corruption case arising from the "Ventilator" corona virus scandal. For background on this, see my previous blogs here, here, and here. Early on, in the height of the Covid pandemic when people in Bosnia were dying by the hundreds, Fahrudin Solak of the Federation Civil Defense Agency engaged Srebrena Malina, a raspberry promotion company based in Srebrenica, to buy and import 100 ventilators from China. Right from the start, it is fishy that an agricultural company—without a license to import medical equipment—would be tasked with such a project.

Fikret Hodžić, director of Srebrena Malina, funneled 10.5 million KM of Federation funds to a Chinese company for 100 respirators. The import developed into a farce when the ventilators, greatly overpriced, arrived and sat in a warehouse for quite a while because there was no one available who was qualified to install them in hospitals. Ultimately the machines turned out to be of poor quality and not suitable for the urgent task of saving people's lives who were suffering from Covid.

In response, the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) investigated the case and the Federation prosecution eventually filed charges against Hodžić, Solak, and Novalić, along with the Minister of Finance, for forgery or concealment of business records, money laundering, and failure to present financial reports, or falsifying such reports. The court case dragged on, with Novalić remaining in power as prime minister of the Federation, through four years of a caretaker government described above.

Just as Novalić's extended term in office was about to come to an end, in a first-instance decision the Bosnian Court found him, Solak, and Hodžić guilty of corruption and abuse of office. Novalić received a four-year sentence, while Solak and Hodžić were sentenced to six and five years, respectively. There will be appeals.

Members of the SDA immediately proclaimed that the case was politically motivated. On the other hand, head of the SDP Nermin Nikšić stated that the affair was obviously a crooked one from the start. Journalist, lawyer, and commentator Senad Pečanin asserted that, by rights, Sebija Izetbegović should have been indicted as well. According to Pečanin the procurement of the ventilators would not have taken place if Izetbegović had not requested them.

Republika Srpska secessionist threats, briefly

When someone sent me an article a couple of weeks ago announcing that Dodik has threatened secession, once again, I responded, "Dog bites man." Probably no one can accurately say how many dozens of times this has taken place. Of course, it is never safe to say that there cannot be secession nor that there cannot be a war resulting from that move, though many people say exactly that. Dodik's threats are not to be taken lightly. But on the whole, they function more as a kind of periodic maintenance of his power, serving to distract his constituency in the RS from serious problems.

The situation prompting Dodik's latest outbursts pertains, again, to state property located in the Republika Srpska. This is property whose fate was not decided by Dayton, and it was left to Bosnian leaders to divide it up or otherwise determine its allocation. They have not succeeded in fulfilling this important requirement for shutting down the OHR and joining the EU. Dodik insists that the erstwhile state property located in the RS now belongs to that entity, in contradiction of several findings by the Constitutional Court that say otherwise. It has been pointed out that Dodik is probably desperate to control the properties in question, as the RS has vast debts coming due, and he would like to use them as collateral, or even sell them outright.

Recently Dodik prompted the RS Parliament to call on the Serb member of the Constitutional Court to resign. He has also threatened to post RS police forces on the border between the two entities—a border that legally has no power to obstruct people's movement. In addition, the RS Parliament continues to promote a law that will curtail people's ability to express themselves in public. For discussion of this move and more on the property issue, see my previous blog here.

In addition to all this, Dodik has again not only threatened secession, as is his habit, but called for unification of the RS with Serbia. Stand by for more on RS secessionist moves.

To respond to this blog, click here to e-mail me.