Members of the Presidency Still Without Reports on Their Meetings

The discussion among members of the BiH Presidency regarding the justification of their travels has recently gained new momentum. Bakir Izetbegović, after objections to his meeting with Vučić at Erdogan's in Istanbul, retorted that Čović constantly travels to Zagreb, and he doesn't ask him any questions about those visits. Let's recall the topic from Vienna's Der Standard, which wrote about Vjekoslav Bevanda who, according to audit reports, officially stayed in Zagreb for 15 days and in Split for 48 days in 2015, and that around 5,000 euros were spent on tires for his official car.

The member of the BiH Presidency, Mladen Ivanić, met with the Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović at the beginning of the week without the other two members of the Presidency. Everything indicates that the policy of Bosnia and Herzegovina is conducted outside of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The key issue is not the travel of our statesmen, but the explanation that should accompany their travels. Namely, to whom do the members of the Presidency report on their meetings with other statesmen? What is the purpose of these trips is also a key question?    

Patria sought and obtained answers from the Secretariat to which members of the Presidency should submit reports on their travels and, possibly, the content of their discussions during their meetings.   

“Neither the Constitution nor the laws stipulate an obligation for members of the Presidency to submit reports on their travels to other legal or natural persons,” explained Boris Buha, Chief Secretary of the BiH Presidency. “They also have no obligation to submit reports on the content of discussions with representatives of authorities of other countries, international organizations, and institutions.”  

The Secretariat of the BiH Presidency stated that they inform the public about these meetings of the Presidency members. The auxiliary services of the Presidency regularly inform the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about these international meetings of their bosses, which is responsible for implementing BiH's established foreign policy.

Do the members of the Presidency inform each other about the discussions they held during their travels? The Secretariat claims that discussions on this topic are held at their sessions.

Have the members of the Presidency, Dragan Čović and Bakir Izetbegović, submitted written reports on their recent trips to Croatia and Turkey to anyone? Certainly not. However, the visit of the tripartite BiH Presidency to Brussels was a rare moment of joint representation of BiH.

That was the moment when each of them finally knew what the other two were doing. Europe has clearly “read” our statesmen, so it mostly invites and hosts them as a package.   

The BiH Presidency has its own budget, which in recent years has averaged around 7.3 million KM. Each member has their own cabinet with precisely defined amounts for operating and maintenance costs.       

Therefore, there are no control mechanisms for the official travels of the BiH Presidency members, for the content of their meetings, or even for the spending of this country's citizens' money. The rule of law exists only for lower classes and subjects, and this rule is confirmed in the BiH Presidency as well. Namely, drivers and bodyguards are obliged to write down all the details of their travels to be able to collect daily allowances. On the other hand, their bosses have no constitutional or legal responsibilities in their work. They can submit reports, but they don't have to. There is no responsibility for the content and substance of their work. Have we reached a state where each member of the Presidency can conduct their own foreign policy, without control and far from the foreign policy guidelines of their institution? For now, they don't even need foreign policy guidelines, which are their key internal act. /S.O. – A.A./