No Dini Parity: The Troika in 'Ignorance' Left the Office for Public Administration to HDZ, SDP Silenced!?

Written by: Amra Vrabac

After the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina at its session on February 1 appointed Darko Kasap as coordinator for public administration reform, Miloš Golijanin as deputy, and Samir Sabljica as acting deputy, the question arose as to how the Troika also left this position to HDZ BiH when the distribution of positions agreed that the Troika would get the coordinator position for public administration.

It was precisely this success and the so-called 12-12-12 parity in state agencies and institutions that NIP leader Elmedin Konaković boasted about, especially emphasizing that they also got public administration.

What is strangest in the whole story is the voting at the Council of Ministers of BiH. After the vote, and the representatives of the Troika (the minutes of that Council of Ministers session have not yet been published) realized that a mistake had been made, they requested a re-vote. However, the Chairwoman of the Council of Ministers of BiH, Borjana Krišto, said that that item was concluded.

As Patria learns, the coordinator was supposed to be proposed by SDP BiH, and it was precisely for that position that Sabljica applied for the competition, not for the deputy position for which he was appointed!?

The competition was announced in October 2023, and as reported by the Fokus portal, the competition was not conducted by the Agency for Civil Service of BiH, as in other cases of hiring new officials, but by the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers of BiH, headed by HDZ cadre Robert Vidović.

The commission for conducting the competition consisted of four of his assistants and one advisor to Chairwoman Borjana Krišto, along with a recorder. They compiled the list of candidates that was forwarded to the Council of Ministers of BiH.

The commission that scored the candidates (Photo: Fokus.ba)

What is an additional problem is that only Sabljica was appointed as acting deputy, which can last up to 90 days, while Kasap and Golijanin were appointed for a four-year term. So, even if Sabljica takes over the deputy position, who guarantees him that his mandate would be extended for a position for which he did not even apply.

Incidentally, Sabljica met all the conditions for coordinator for public administration reform, given that he holds a doctorate from the Faculty of Public Administration of the University of Sarajevo and is the author of dozens of scientific papers. In the text of the competition, under special conditions, a university degree in social sciences was stated, with a preferred higher academic degree (master's or doctorate), which Sabljica has.

A simple Google search for Sabljica yields numerous pieces of information, papers, and publications, while for Darko Kasap, one can only find that in 2019 he was appointed deputy coordinator for public administration reform for a four-year term.

In January 2023, after a meeting in East Sarajevo, the Troika stated that they had obtained another state agency, namely the Office for Public Administration Reform.

Of the 12-12-12 parity and Konaković's announcements about equalization, there is clearly nothing, and the political wolves, as he calls Dragan Čović and Milorad Dodik, outplayed them once again.

Even after the new meeting held in Sarajevo, there was no talk of this deception, because the Constitutional Court of BiH and the Election Law, new demands by the Dodik-Čović duo, took precedence, and the Troika is not even able to fight for the positions it agreed upon.

Sabljica met all the conditions for coordinator