Dragan Čović in the service of Slaven Kovačević's election campaign

By Sifet Kukuruz, legal expert

The recently held conference in Zagreb, dedicated to considering modalities for the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina, or rather, achieving wartime and unlawful association of persons goals in peacetime, could yield a result contrary to the expectations of the organizers, promoters, and participants.

Effect as a Counter-effect

Although the conference agenda is an expression of the non-hidden, decades-long desires of HDZ BiH leader Dragan Čović, the conference's effect could be a counter-effect. To use a sports analogy, Čović has scored a political own goal with this conference on the eve of the election campaign. Besides the fact that the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina is an illusion that has obsessed many throughout recent and distant history, the conference has certainly mobilized and homogenized not only Bosniaks but also Croats who feel Bosnia and Herzegovina as their homeland and are against its division.

All those who had any dilemma regarding the choice between Slaven Kovačević's policy and Darija Filipović's policy, as Čović's personal political surrogate, no longer have such dilemmas after the aforementioned conference; their vote will certainly go to Slaven Kovačević. Thus, it has been shown that Dragan Čović, with his anti-state policy, is directly working to affirm the policy propagated by Slaven Kovačević.

The only chance for Dragan Čović to mitigate the damage he has caused and regain citizens' trust is to publicly distance himself from the goals of the mentioned conference and clearly condemn the drawing of new maps for the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Therefore, Slaven Kovačević could seriously consider formally offering a position in his election headquarters to Dragan Čović as well.

Čović is Playing with the Wrong Cards

The latest redrawing of maps for the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina confirms that Dragan Čović has politically overplayed his hand, and more importantly, that he is playing with the wrong cards. Despite his extensive political experience, Dragan Čović has made a poor assessment. As unrealistic as it may seem, after the conference in Zagreb, the candidacy of Darija Filipović has been completely nullified and rendered meaningless, while the candidacy of Slaven Kovačević for the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Croat people has been strengthened.

It is precisely Dragan Čović who has made Slaven Kovačević's candidacy completely legitimate from the perspective of the interests of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and all its citizens and peoples. By drawing maps for the unconstitutional restructuring of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the HDZ leader has secured a one-way ticket for his candidate, a ticket to the elections, but without entering the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

At the same time, by drawing new maps for the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slaven Kovačević has been given a strong argument with which to strengthen the trust of Bosniaks, who traditionally do not support candidates from the Bosniak people, but also to strengthen trust among Croats who perceive Bosnia and Herzegovina as their homeland. And there are many of them, and their number is not small.

By drawing new maps in Zagreb, Dragan Čović has completely revealed his hand and shown that these are not European cards, nor are they cards that guarantee stability and a peaceful future for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The HDZ leader has once again confirmed that his cards are based on the cartography that Gojko Šušak, Mate Boban, and their followers unsuccessfully tried to draw in the nineties.

Legitimate without Legitimacy

Although for the past two decades or more, the leader of HDZ BiH has blamed Bosniaks for the failure of the concept of so-called legitimate representation, in practice it turns out that those who invoke this concept, primarily HDZ leader Dragan Čović and his ally, SNSD leader Milorad Dodik, have contributed the most to the downfall of this concept.

The most striking and recent evidence for this claim is the formation of the Government of the Federation of BiH, as well as the election of a member of the Collegium from the Bosniak people in the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, when the political representatives of Bosniaks were completely ignored.

Legitimate Representatives Delegitimized Their Own Concept

In the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, Kemal Ademović was imposed as a political "representative of Bosniaks" through the personal engagement of Dragan Čović and Milorad Dodik. Ademović was appointed to the leadership of the House of Peoples solely by the will of Serb and Croat political representatives, not by the will of Bosniaks. More precisely, a political representative of Bosniaks was appointed in this specific case contrary to the will of Bosniaks.

And finally, it should be pointed out once again the logical and legal unsustainability of the concept of legitimate representation in the Presidency of BiH. This artificially constructed concept is contrary to the Constitution of BiH, because the Presidency of BiH represents the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, not the entities, and all members of the Presidency of BiH are equally constitutionally obligated to represent the interests of all citizens of BiH, not just the people from whom they are elected. In this constitutional context, all legitimacy is exhausted through the obligation of each member of the Presidency of BiH to equally represent the interests of all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Since the Presidency of BiH is not an entity body, nor an institution through which the interests of only constituent peoples are protected and represented, there can be no doubt that it is not constitutionally or legally possible for Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs to have "their members" in the Presidency of BiH. This constitutional and legal fact has also been confirmed by the decisions of the Constitutional Court of BiH.

Who's That Singing Over There

The logical unsustainability, as well as the constitutional lack of foundation, of the demand that constituent peoples have "their" members in the Presidency of BiH, could be compared to riding a bus, where the bus driver cannot only care for the safety of passengers belonging to his own ethnic group during the ride. The bus driver must equally care for the safety of all passengers.

Only such management during the ride guarantees both a safe journey and security for all passengers. Therefore, Dragan Čović, think carefully about the cards you are playing and how you are driving through these Bosnian and Herzegovinian wildernesses that have outlived much greater gamblers and reckless drivers.