Divided Konaković: Now Čović's Pawn, Now Plenković's: That's Why He Fears Slaven Kovačević More Than His Own Bosses!

Written by: Rasim Belko

First, the pawns are sacrificed.

It was expected that the first reactions to the announcement of Slaven Kovačević's candidacy for the BiH Presidency would come from the HDZ BiH, but, except in the media and on forums close to Dragan Čović's party, there were no reactions.

Instead of a direct reaction, Čović used the Sarajevo pawn, the People and Justice party and its president Elmedin Konaković, to be the first to politically fall by opposing someone's candidacy.

Konaković, or rather his party, fired blanks at Kovačević, showing the kind of nervousness and panic that would befit Dragan Čović and the HDZ. And that is no longer a surprise; on the contrary, it is a logical sequence of steps that Elmedin Konaković is taking.

Since his appointment to the position of head of BiH diplomacy, Konaković has shown absolute loyalty to the Republic of Croatia and its policy towards Bosnia and Herzegovina. At one point, at the beginning of his mandate, Konaković did not dare to correctly answer the question of whether Croatia had carried out armed aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the HRT studio, he fidgeted, equivocated, and ultimately avoided stating what the International Criminal Court in The Hague had ruled – that Croatia had committed aggression against BiH by participating in a Joint Criminal Enterprise.

In the past three years, Konaković has settled scores with everyone, most notably with those in Sarajevo who advocated for resolving key issues in the interest of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its citizens. He remained silent, completely calm in the face of the fact that Dragan Čović was a key partner to Milorad Dodik in the attempt to overthrow the constitutional order, as well as all the blockades that Dodik carried out in collusion with Čović.

Without Čović, those blockades would not have happened, but Konaković did not dare to respond to him even once. However, he boldly undermined Slaven Kovačević's attempt to enable the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina the democratic right to vote for all candidates for the Presidency, and the change in the method of electing delegates to the House of Peoples.

Since the beginning of his mandate, Konaković has advocated for Čović's falsely argued narrative that "Bosniaks should not elect Croatian representatives." Contrary to this HDZ-NiP narrative is the Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which states that every citizen residing in the entity of the Federation of BiH has the right to vote for any candidate for the BiH Presidency from that electoral unit.

But Konaković received the task, and as a faithful servant and a divided political lackey, now of Plenković, now of Čović, he tried to render Kovačević's appeal to the European Court in Strasbourg meaningless using the same discourse.

At that time, as he does today, he twisted the facts, for example claiming that Kovačević complained about the disenfranchisement of Bosnians and Herzegovinians as others, although it is perfectly clear even to legal laymen that Kovačević's appeal concerned being prevented from electing a member of the BiH Presidency from the entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina and being completely prevented from electing delegates to the House of Peoples.

But Konaković is a pawn of the Croatian political narrative, so facts do not hinder him in his propaganda mission. In one of his interviews with Patria, Kovačević clearly stated: "in all my submissions, I clearly prove that the election for the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina is ethnically and territorially limited, and that I am affected because I cannot fully vote for all candidates, and for the candidates for the House of Peoples I cannot vote at all, nor are these indirect elections because an indirectly elected body cannot conduct new indirect elections based on new electoral lists that have nothing to do with us voters."

At the same time, Konaković, like the rest of the Troika bloc, enabled illegal agents of Bosnia and Herzegovina to go to Strasbourg and, in collusion with the policy of the Republic of Croatia and Christian Schmidt, overturn the first-instance verdict in the Kovačević case, through force of propaganda and bribery, not legal arguments.

That is why it is no wonder that Konaković is on the front pages of all pro-HDZ media in Bosnia and Herzegovina and abroad. Because the logical sequence of his politics and moves over the past three years is the fact that he fired the first shot at the legitimate and legal candidacy of Slaven Kovačević for the Presidency.

After all, just a few days ago, Konaković showed how loyal a stalwart he is to Plenković, Čović, and Maks Primorac. At a rally he should not have attended, he praised Plenković as a friend of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who then sneakily entered our country in an aggressive manner with the help of internal quislings. And then he went to see Milorad Dodik, whom Konaković attacks with sticks and stones, trying to create a false image of successfully removing the SNSD president from the political life of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Aware of the fact that the politics of the Troika bloc have set Bosnia and Herzegovina back more than all other policies and that some harmful consequences will be difficult to correct, Konaković is left only to hope that he will be lucky enough that after the 2026 elections, the HDZ and Dragan Čović will try to save him as a pawn for settling scores within the Sarajevo valley.

And while he accuses Kovačević and the Democratic Front as the party that nominated him, Konaković looks in the mirror and talks about the alleged real motives and background of "such a destructive campaign against the idea of building a fairer system." Presumably, the lost pawn of Croatian politics counts on us having forgotten that it was he who repeatedly stated that he was against a fairer system, and in the case of the appeal before the ECtHR, he directly supported the fight against that fairer system.

He is completely lost; it's lucky that the elections are less than a year away, because then he will be lost between great emotions and small possibilities, somewhere in the alley of inadequate politicians!