Grubeša defends Bevanda: Political bickering in the time of corona!

(Patria) - An unbelievable situation is happening at a critical moment for BiH. The situation has not been politicized for only a few days, and it has already started.

Thus, Josip Grubeša commented today on the accusations against the Minister of Finance Vjekoslav Bevanda due to the proposal and adoption of the Law on the Budget of BiH Institutions for 2020 at the session of the Council of Ministers of BiH on March 24, 2020.

"I don't know what the accusations are about, obviously there were no reasons on March 5 when the Chairman of the Council of Ministers did not vote for the Decision on Temporary Financing because he wanted the Budget to be adopted. Only 19 days earlier, when the pandemic was the same and the whole world was talking about this virus, because of which Italy even then "fell to its knees", Mr. Tegeltija changed his mind.

So what is wrong with the Budget for 2020 now? From his statement, it could be concluded that he does not agree with the positions on which the institutions have foreseen certain sums of money?

If I am not mistaken, he was already the Minister of Finance, so I cannot say that this is due to ignorance, because it is understood that he knows that according to the law, the Budget for 2020 was prepared the previous year in August. And that at that time, unlike the time when he changed his mind, there was no talk of a pandemic.

The budget is prepared based on the Document of the Indicative Budget, which is prepared for three years and represents a preliminary draft budget for the next year, which is also prescribed by law. It is clear that the Budget for 2020 was planned and completed in 2019.

The Ministry of Finance has a legal obligation to propose the budget, so the state of emergency is not an excuse for the chairman to break the law, but it is more important that we all behave socially acceptably and respect the laws. If we are asked to respect the curfew, we should also respect the Law on Financing of Institutions of BiH.

Either all or nothing, we cannot choose which regulation to respect. This is not just a question of acting in accordance with the law, and to be clear, I mean the lawful conduct of my colleague Vjekoslav Bevanda, because I would assess the Chairman's conduct in this situation as, at best, immature. Since he is talking about the problem of the coronavirus, how did the Chairman not consider that it would be better to have full planned funds available, so that they could be restructured to the item where it is necessary, rather than having a quarter of those funds available according to the Decision on Temporary Financing. Or is it completely okay for the Chairman that institutions struggle until the virus passes, and then we would propose the same budget, just as Prime Minister Novalić says that we will talk about the economy when the pandemic passes.

Experts in this field have been working on this document for months, and to change it, if necessary, we would have to dedicate more time to it. Everything indicates that this is a pure political move to stop the adoption of the Budget for 2020, so that institutions do not work normally for some time, neither during the pandemic, nor afterwards, which is shamefully hidden behind empty statements about the need to fight the coronavirus," Grubeša announced.