Shallow Political Acumen, or How Izetbegović is Destroying BiH and the Bosniaks

Just a month and a half separates the SDA from the Congress where a new president will be elected. The frantic race for the position of the SDA's top man is heavily reflecting on the already complex political situation in BiH, writes the Bosnian news agency Patria.

This was already clear during the negotiations on forming the government. Although the public, and primarily SDA voters, expected Bakir Izetbegović to slam his fist on the table and thus demonstrate that the election winner has no right to back down before Dragan Čović and his megalomaniacal demands, that, unfortunately, did not happen.

Throughout this time, he maximally used Željko Komšić and his DF, as a, as it turns out, only “associate” member in a coalition where they will have no say. Komšić's policy of not replacing directors whose mandates have not expired, abolishing advisors, white bread… suits Izetbegović because he has his people entrenched in all positions.

For Izetbegović and his main advisors, who after the death of Sulejman Tihić, overnight broke into the front row, Aljoša Čampara and Denis Zvizdić, the only goal is to satisfy personal ambitions.

There are other names of those who during Tihić's time would slink along party corridors so no one would see them, and now they are the main faces, but the key duo is still this one. They are the first and the last word.

The most obvious example of this is the insistence on appointing Dragan Lukač to the position of director of the Federal Police Administration. Regardless of whether he has already met the conditions for retirement or will do so in a few days.

What is happening with the politics of Bosniak political leaders? Where is the strategy? Where is the analytical thinking about the state, about the people they represent?

Where is the responsibility for this state? Rightly, SDA leaders emphasize the memory and the story that it is precisely this party and its people who are responsible for the defense of the state.

But what good is that, when the current leadership not only lacks enough political acumen and prudence to preserve what was defended, but also threatens to destroy even this little that remains.  

If they truly cared, they would not so lightly give key positions, such as for example this police director with exceptionally large powers, to some Lukač, just to satisfy Čampara's desires to be a minister.

Of course, he would gladly be the police director but he does not have the rank of general inspector. That rank, however, is held by many other people besides Lukač, who are more capable and professional than him.

Don't the Bosniaks have a single general inspector of their own? They do, but not to the measure of Izetbegović and Čampara. Because, in that case, the minister would then be from the ranks of another people.

And what does the Minister of the FMUP mean? By law, nothing. The powers are negligible, because the minister must not interfere in the operational work of the police. But having someone like the compromised Lukač, then the minister means being everything.

By the same principle, to house myself and mine, and what will become of the state and the people, it is to be expected that Izetbegović and his key advisors treat other extremely important positions - from the director of SIPA, OSA to the Agency for Prevention of Corruption and Coordination of the Fight against Corruption - in the same way.

It was the same during the distribution of ministries. First, the “obedient ones” were drawn up, and then the positions they would get.

Unlike this shallow Bosniak acumen, the political representatives of the other two peoples think strategically.

They first choose the “heavier” ministries, and then select people for the positions. Will the SDA, which organized patriots in the defense of the country and created the state, be the main culprit for its disappearance? And let no one come out anymore with the theses that Čović and Dodik are tearing it apart.

Of course, they do this in a planned and excellently executed manner, because they do not have an adequate response from the Bosniak political corpus. And who is most responsible? The one with 300,000 votes and whose only goal is the end of May and the presidential chair in the SDA. And what will he need the SDA and everything else for if the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina begins to disappear!?