Čović and HDZ a greater destabilising factor than Dodik: Due to Vukoja, they have blocked the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina again, do Schmidt and Murphy see this?

Written by: Rasim Belko @rasimbelko

There is less and less money in the budgets, there are still enough games to entertain the people who are heading towards the European Union in horse-drawn carts with stone wheels. At the speed we are moving towards that union, we will probably never even arrive, because Dodik's secessionism stops us on that path. And that is true, but even truer is that there are worse ones than Dodik.

Although the President of the RS and SNSD was characterised as the key problem of Bosnia and Herzegovina's political life, to which he himself contributed, European and American officials have, in all likelihood, deliberately omitted mentioning another insurmountable obstacle to the progress of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state and society.

Dragan Čović, the most experienced political manipulator in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is actually the biggest obstacle, much bigger than Milorad Dodik. Because Dodik blocks through the RS, which is in considerable financial collapse, and through state institutions, but he cannot even do that without Čović's support.

Čović, on the other hand, blocks the entity of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the economically more advanced and stable part of the country, in which the HDZ leader finds the greatest leverage for blackmailing the state in order to secure the realisation of his plans. And the realisation of Čović's plans is completely identical to Dodik's.

However, there is no blacklist for Čović, no European sanctions, even though he terrorised the legislative authority in the Federation throughout 2023 and kept it in a blockade. The reason has long been known: the appointment of Marin Vukoja as a judge of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which only failed to happen thanks to the persistence of opposition politicians in the Parliament of the FBiH.

Vukoja is Čović's ticket to the future, that is, a token he will use every time he gets stuck in post-election government formation, but also when Dodik gets stuck with the decisions of the Constitutional Court… And that is why for over a year he has been pushing for the resolution of exclusively one issue.

Due to Čović's insistence on Vukoja, the Parliament of the Federation is disabled from fulfilling the task for which it exists. The laws that citizens and the wider public expect are on standby, and the FBiH Government, which Čović also controls, rarely sends or does not send at all proposals for legal solutions into the parliamentary procedure.

There are six working days left until the end of the year, and not a word about the proposed Federation budget. So, it is clear that Dragan Čović, in his efforts to achieve his interests, and Vukoja is currently his primary one, is ready to push the FBiH entity into financial uncertainty and temporary financing.

Furthermore, the controller of all processes in the FBiH, Dragan Čović, in an attempt to get rid of the opposition from the decision-making process on Vukoja, also secured a proposal to amend the Rules of Procedure of the House of Representatives of the FBiH. The Rules of Procedure proposed by the partners from HDZ and the Sarajevo Troika resemble more some Lukashenko proposal than democracy. With these Rules of Procedure, the opposition's hands would be completely tied, and all paths would be open for Čović to realise both the appointment of Vukoja and all other projects such as the Southern Interconnection without BH Gas and the like.

One does not need to be particularly familiar with all the processes to see that Čović has halted vital flows in the Federation in order to subdue the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The delays in the functioning of the government are clearly a product of the fact that he has outlined to the partners from the Troika that they must appoint Vukoja in order for anything else to be done. And it will be like that until Vukoja is appointed or until some miracle happens and Čović is stripped of his levers of omnipotence.

The removability of government is the core of democracy, and even that has been rendered meaningless in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Because, while High Representative Christian Schmidt is trying with all his might to fulfil the wishes of Plenković and Čović, or Murphy, imposing governments and announcing electronic voting, he forgets that we are a country that does not have the institute of early elections.

And early elections in a situation of total crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina and its entities would certainly produce a change of government and thus enable someone else to try to solve the accumulated problems.

As long as Čović is secure and in a comfortable position of absolute control over the processes in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, those processes will be blocked and halted. In other words, Čović will not stop, so in the coming year we can expect a repeat of the Vukoja process, which kept the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina under blockade in the past year.