Čović pushes European path as key topic, while numerous open issues burden relations between HDZ, Trojka, and SNSD

By: Amra Vrabac

On Tuesday, October 15, a meeting of the leaders of the parties forming the state government will be held in the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH. The host of the meeting is Trojka, i.e., Nermin Nikšić, Elmedin Konaković, and Edin Forto. Leaders of HDZ and SNSD will arrive at the meeting with wider delegations.

The coalition has not met for months, and the Council of Ministers of BiH has not proposed any laws from the EU agenda in the meantime. An agreement has not yet been reached on the Law on the Court of BiH, i.e., the seat of the Court of Appeals, the Law on Border Control, but also on some appointments and dismissals that burden relations within the coalition parties.

As always optimistic, HDZ leader Dragan Čović expressed optimism on Friday ahead of the meeting with his colleagues.

“The key point would first be to draw a line under all the words that have been spoken or actions in the last two months, because a lot has been said, not even between representatives of different political options from the three nations, but within one nation. If you have followed these days, you have seen the party president addressing the deputy president through the media and so on. I think that is the atmosphere we have. The desire is for the European path to be the issue of all issues in the next three months, what we can do through the Council of Ministers, and what through Parliament, so that what we have spoken of optimistically can be realized,” said Čović.

He admitted that he had individual meetings with partners, but that they did not go public due to the campaign.

“We will select four or five priorities that we received from the European Commission. The Chairperson of the Council of Ministers of BiH has been constantly traveling these days, not in Mostar, or rather in Bosnia and Herzegovina, so that we can see exactly what we need to do. I believe there is enough room for that. I hope we will not jeopardize it with some new adventure, political or God forbid, we have another catastrophe or whatever. It is important that we have left the elections behind us. We have enough time, two years until the next elections, to dedicate sufficient attention to these issues,” said Čović.

Of course, one of HDZ's priorities is certainly the Election Law of BiH, which they will not give up on, as confirmed in the HNS statement on Friday.

When it comes to some other contentious issues, there are the election of the director of SIPA and the dismissal of fugitive Zoran Galić, who holds the position of deputy director of SIPA.

The Council of Ministers of BiH has not made a decision on the director of SIPA because there was no necessary majority in the Collegium at the September session to include this item on the agenda. Thus, the director of SIPA is still Darko Ćulum.

The Minister of Security of BiH, Nenad Nešić, is not giving up on the candidate Slobodan Radinković, for whom there is information that he had contact with individuals from the criminal milieu, and there is a fear that he is compromised for such an important position. Otherwise, Radinković was third on the ranking list, and the minister has the discretionary right to submit the name they want to the Council of Ministers of BiH.

In mid-September, Nešić said that Radinković had consent in the “Serb corpus” as well, meaning that Milorad Dodik, the president of SNSD and RS, also supported him.

On the other hand, the saga with Zoran Galić has been going on for months. He has been outside BiH since July 8, and he illegally fled to Croatia. The Prosecutor's Office of BiH suspects him of abuse of office and receiving a bribe while he was the director of the BiH Border Police. An Interpol red notice has also been issued for him.

However, there is no will among the HDZ representatives in the Council of Ministers of BiH to dismiss or remove Galić from his position. Instead, they are asking for the request submitted by his lawyers to be acted upon, to be prematurely dismissed, which would allow him to receive a severance package due to retirement. Representatives from the Bosniak constituency do not want to agree to this.

The session of the Independent Board, which has three members close to HDZ and who avoid taking a clear stance and proposing only the dismissal of Galić without any benefits to the Council of Ministers of BiH, has already been postponed twice.

The fact is that Galić has been unjustifiably absent since July 8 and is not receiving a salary. However, this saga should finally be concluded. And this should be the demand of the Trojka parties for HDZ to finally take a stance on Galić.

The session of the House of Peoples of the BiH PS should also be discussed at this meeting, which makes decisions at urgent sessions, because delegates from the Bosniak Club do not want to attend the continuation of the regular session due to the Proposal for Amendments to the Law on the Constitutional Court of BiH. That proposal was included on the agenda by the votes of HDZ, and this party claims that they will reject it and thus prevent it from being further considered.

However, the Bosniak Club does not want to risk the Law being adopted after all, and then go to the House of Representatives of the BiH PS where it is much harder to control the representatives. One of the ideas is to provide a written guarantee from the HDZ leader that they will reject this proposal in the House of Peoples of the BiH PS. Otherwise, the proposer of the law is Želimir Nešković from SDS, but who received the support of all SNSD delegates.

The next session of the Council of Ministers of BiH is scheduled for October 17, and the agenda has not yet been published. It will certainly depend on the outcome of the coalition leaders' meeting.