Who is the SDA leader: Izetbegović on display or Sarajlić on proof

After it was revealed that the SDA's chief personnel officer Asim Sarajlić had privately placed loyal cadres in management positions at BH Telecom, this party touched the edge of the abyss. The complete shock that took hold of the party led to urgent meetings last week on Thursday, then Friday, then Saturday, when Sarajlić did not even show up, all ending with a telephone session of the Government to change Sarajlić's arbitrary decisions.

Earlier warnings to SDA leader Bakir Izetbegović that this was a man prone to insolence and arrogant behavior were of no avail. This time there was no room for conformism, which would have prevailed again had it not been for the threat to significant positions in the most powerful public company and the party's golden goose.           

Unfortunately, the SDA party does not have in its ranks inventive people who will pull both the party and the state out of this crisis and into safe waters.

Powerful thugs in the party ranks 

The recent internal conflicts have never been fully resolved, nor concretely calmed down. Instead of entering this time of crisis without internal friction, the SDA has become vulnerable thanks to the unnecessary nepotistic choice of Bakir's wife Sebija to head the UKCS, along with a series of other demands such as merging, relocating, and even closing the General Hospital "Prim.dr. Abdulah Nakaš" in Sarajevo. The SDA has thus found its internal stability shaken.

At the same time, Sarajlić remained the key man of the party, the one who decides from the background, because the main boss is busy with the ambitions and positions of his wife.

For a long time now, the SDA has not been addressing the shaken functionality of its structure. It has only been piling up its own problems and internal misunderstandings.  It never resolved the issue of the enormous wealth of its members. The grabbing of Asim Sarajlić by the throat of Sadik Ahmetović ended with some kind of reconciliation, as if it were a shoving match between first-graders, and not the worst outburst of political primitivism before the eyes of the public.

The internal conflict between the SDA and four of its prominent officials was never fully resolved. Salko Sokolović, one of the men with high moral credibility, and Šemsudin Mehmedović, one of the most powerful pillars of the party, did not deserve a superficial and condemnatory treatment when they requested the removal of Asim Sarajlić.

Only a few months later, Sarajlić resigned from the position of head of the SDA caucus in the State Parliament, but that was just another expression of the SDA's scratching the surface. He already had too many party and other functions.

His arbitrariness was also evident in numerous examples of purges of cadres who, obviously, represented a danger, but to him personally. He almost expelled some of the respected and long-standing members of the SDA from the party. Instead of strengthening the SDA, with every move Sarajlić made, it lost strength. And while the four delegates were being burdened with the blame for discord within the party, the main protagonist Sarajlić was rubbing his hands with satisfaction, plunging the party ever deeper into an unprecedented crisis.

By placing Asim Sarajlić in the most sensitive function, the SDA condemned its personnel policy to complete collapse. What happened later was merely a series of consequences. Sarajlić is a person who was practically the real leader of the party, because he made key decisions from the shadows that always reached their goal. Izetbegović might ask himself how, while he is alive, anyone dared to carry out appointments to management positions in such an insolent manner. But the key question, nevertheless, is where his real position in the SDA is today.    

In his endeavors, Sarajlić also has an assistant within the party, Aljoša Čampara, the Minister of Interior of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who agreed to the dirty game due to his own interests. It should not be forgotten that it was Čampara who strongly lobbied to secure Dragan Lukač a second term as director of the FUP, despite all the conditions he had met for retirement.

Through his connections, Čampara even managed to obtain a court security measure for Lukač, by which Lukač was appointed director of the FUP. Due to all these illegalities, about ten criminal complaints have been filed against Lukač, including by high-ranking FUP officials.

Who is Asim Sarajlić and what are his results and leadership achievements?

There is no need to even mention his inactivity in the State Parliament and parliamentary questions of the type: Place the Lijanovići at the head of the future state ministry for agriculture, and at the head of those ministries in both the Federation and the RS.                

Sarajlić, as the mayor of Vogošća, ruled the municipality from 2004 to 2010, but also after his term as mayor ended. Today, Vogošća has a meager budget of 8.99 million KM. When the salaries of the accumulated administration are divided, a negligible sum remains for the needs of the citizens. For example, the budget of Vogošća is three times smaller than that of Novo Sarajevo, four times smaller than Ilidža and Novi Grad, and even 1.3 million KM smaller than Hadžići. The real values of what has been done become apparent long after the mandate of a particular leader, less so during his tenure. Only now is it clearly visible what Sarajlić did and left behind in Vogošća.

What is necessarily written in Sarajlić's biography is MP (Monty Python-esque) humor: He joined the SDA at the age of 15. Such premature juvenile party ambitions have not been seen in these parts.

Within the SDA, one could list more characters who, through their deeds, undermine the already tarnished reputation of the party.

Just one of them is the Prime Minister of the Federation, Fadil Novalić, who, by giving statements like an actor in the Monty Python series, received extensive media coverage in England, in the "News from Everywhere" section.