Better SDP: Request for Withdrawal of Jasmin Imamović's Candidacy

Members of SDP BiH of Tuzla Municipality gathered around the idea of a Better SDP BiH have sent an open letter to Jasmin Imamović regarding the continuation of his unprincipled election campaign for the president of SDP BiH, in which they call on him to publicly withdraw his candidacy, reports the Bosnian news agency Patria.

- Following the latest statement by the consistently inconsistent Jasmin Imamović that Tuzla deserves to have a president of SDP BiH, hundreds and thousands of SDP members and supporters in Tuzla openly express protest against such a hypocritical statement that insults the common sense of SDP members in Tuzla. Well, Mr. Imamović, have you forgotten what you did and what happened at the Extraordinary Congress of the SDP in December 2014?

Why didn't you say nine months ago that the president of SDP should be from Tuzla? With your candidacy for president in 2015, you gave everyone the answer to this question. Clearly, it couldn't be clearer! But also contradictory, it couldn't be more contradictory! How can one find, Mr. Imamović, even a trace of consistency in your actions? Not at all, because it is impossible.

Numerous SDP members from Tuzla who are not afraid of your reign of terror in Tuzla and your dirty methods of political elimination publicly ask you:

- Why are you deceiving the public with the unfounded story that you were the twenty-fifth (25th) man in the SDP hierarchy? When, Mr. Jasmin, did you tell the truth, in recent days or in recent years when you loudly boasted that you were the most influential vice-president of the Main Board of SDP and, on that basis, one of the most important people in the SDP?

- Why, Mr. Jasmin, did you trip up Selim Bešlagić - the wartime mayor of Tuzla and a man who made a significant contribution to the unification of Bosnian social democracy at the time - at the Extraordinary Congress? Did you do that so that today you would be a candidate for president of SDP BiH?

- Why, before the Extraordinary Congress, did you prevent Bešlagić from even having the opportunity to speak with the Tuzla delegates? If nothing else, you had to do that as the long-time "loyal" secretary of Selim Bešlagić, from whose shadow you became the mayor of Tuzla. Everyone wonders what the true face of Jasmin Imamović is, today's or the one that glorified and praised Selim for 12 years.

- Do you feel any personal responsibility for the heavy election defeats in Tuzla in 2012 and 2014? Do you really think that everyone above and below you is to blame, and that only you are not at fault for anything?

- Why did you continue your catastrophically bad personnel policy that drove a large number of respected and recognized citizens of Tuzla away from the SDP?

- Why, even after the election defeats, did you continue to implement your private personnel policy and create a policy of fear, subservience, and sycophancy?

Mr. Imamović, these are just some of the questions to which numerous long-time members of SDP Tuzla, as well as other well-intentioned citizens, are seeking meaningful answers.

You owe all of them an honest explanation of why, how, and with what methods you did everything to discredit Selim Bešlagić during the preparations and holding of the Extraordinary Congress? Unfortunately, you did not stop only at slandering Bešlagić, but you decided to discredit and slander numerous other SDP leaders, as well as current opponents, in a way that no one in the history of the SDP has done before. Surely, Mr. Jasmin, not everyone is bad and only you are good and sinless?

Finally, although your election campaign team claims otherwise, we believe that you too are aware that your election as president of the SDP would lead to a complete split and disunity in the SDP, not only in Tuzla but also more broadly. Therefore, we publicly call on you, in the name of the future of Tuzla and social democracy, to publicly withdraw your candidacy for president and to publicly apologize to everyone you have unjustly vilified in the previous period.

Tuzla, September 16, 2015

Members of SDP BiH from 40 local communities of Tuzla Municipality