Huskić: We are hostages of an incredibly irresponsible government, the crisis continues!

Political analyst Adnan Huskić told the Patria news agency that 2016 showed that what determines the direction of politics in BiH is the issue of money on one hand and on the other, the lack of money to fuel such public spending.

- The second thing is a shocking inability of politics and administration to tackle the real problems of BiH, which is a direct result of the policy of employment and usurpation of public resources, which political parties in BiH consider the purpose of their political existence.

Huskić believes that instead of dealing with reforms and socio-economic issues, political parties are spending their energy on returning to the track of ethno-territoriality, the third entity, and independence, and he believes this will continue in 2017.

- The financial situation will be worse. I have no reason to believe that such governments, whose peak in solving problems is introducing odd-even traffic restrictions, for example, or lacking any policy. What we should fear is that all three neighboring countries do not have political problems like BiH. They are not able to cope with this financial and economic crisis, even though all three are in a better state.

Huskić states that besides the incompetent government, there will be less money in BiH because all loans and short-term debts are coming due, and he believes this will be shifted to the political arena.

- I expect further escalation and deepening of the crisis – said Huskić, adding that RS is in a worse situation than FBiH, but that RS is exporting its crisis to the state level where they are not in power.

Asked about the strained relations within the SDA-SBB-HDZ BiH coalition, especially SDA-SBB and SDA-HDZ BiH, and the possibility of early elections, Huskić says that they are pointing fingers at each other for why something is not working, and that internal party struggles will spill over.

- If we are talking about changes to the election law, then we should also talk about the measures and mechanisms for holding early or extraordinary elections. We have not yet had a situation where the government has collapsed to such an extent that political actors in BiH would decide at that moment to organize early elections, no matter how dysfunctional they are. We have gone through two-year technical governments, dysfunctional coalitions, and now we have a dysfunctional coalition at the federal and largely at the state level. None of that is a sufficient reason for them, because it would require political culture and responsibility – says the political analyst.

Huskić specifically comments on the relationship between SDA and HDZ, stating that it is defined by the question: "Whose is what?"

- You see that the whole problem arose the moment the issue of Bosniak control over the Lottery and Croat control over betting shops was raised, and they function within those registers. And as soon as you started talking about someone entering someone else's feudal sector, a problem arose that will not end in 2017. As for FBiH, I don't see how this constellation could function at all.

This year was marked by numerous meetings of coalition partners, which ended with the same conclusion: We agreed to continue agreeing.

- Why are we talking about the coalition at the federal level and this further mockery and fooling of citizens with these meetings. This is a crisis that is its own purpose. They are opened to divert attention from the fact that they neither know, nor can, nor want to solve any serious problem in this country. We are hostages of an incredibly irresponsible government, to the point that they are ready to roll this country to the very bottom to protect what they have and maintain this status quo, even though it is financially unsustainable – says Huskić.

In the end, he concluded that all cash flows are closed, and short-term borrowing through securities is not possible.

- That was the goal, to close their access to all external financing options. The international community did that with the idea of first closing, and then imposing conditions. Now it's just a game between our politicians and the international community as to who will give up first. Will they continue with the policy of conditionalities, which the Reform Agenda has been reduced to (which the IMF is doing), or will politicians convince them that they are ready to go to the point of creating a security problem in BiH and thus force them to say: "Here's the money, just don't let there be bigger problems."