Podžić: The Government needed the Decree to dismiss public companies, and then they renounced it

Prime Minister of the Federation of BiH Fadil Novalić denies the Democratic Front, whose members claimed yesterday that the Government had rescinded the controversial Decree on the method of appointment in public enterprises, which the DF has been pointing a finger at for several months, and due to which they left the federal coalition with HDZ and SDA at the beginning of June, writes the BiH news agency Patria.

Novalić claims that the Decree has not been rescinded; instead, ministries have now been given only operational responsibilities. On the other hand, DF Secretary General Sifet Podžić has no doubt that SDA and HDZ BiH used the month-long period to appoint their people to leading positions in several important companies in the Federation with the help of the Decree, and then abandoned the Decree, i.e., returned to the principle of managing public companies as it was before the adoption of the controversial Decree.

A little over a month ago, the Government of the Federation of BiH adopted a Decree by which the authority for appointing the heads of public enterprises in the Federation was taken away from the relevant ministries and transferred to the Government of the Federation of BiH. The DF assessed the Decree as counter-indicative, even unconstitutional, after which they left the coalition with SDA and HDZ at the level of the Federation of BiH.

A month after the adoption of the Decree, the Government of the Federation of BiH adopted a new document, a conclusion, with which it returned the operational part of the work to the relevant ministries.

In three points of the Conclusion adopted at the Government session in Mostar, it is stated that in the future, ministries will be responsible for preparing materials related to: participation in the work and decision-making at the general meeting of the business company; election and nomination, as well as dismissal of candidates for supervisory boards in public companies, as well as preparation of materials related to granting consent for appointment and dismissal of management board members in these companies.

Although the DF claims that the Government has derogated itself with this conclusion, and that it has returned to what the DF had been demanding all along, Novalić denies such claims. He said that the Decree is still in force and that the Government is exclusively competent to decide on appointments and dismissals in leading positions in public companies.

According to Novalić, the Conclusion adopted by the Government states that the relevant ministries are responsible for carrying out exclusively technical and operational preparation of materials, while the final decision on appointments in public companies is made by the Government again.

Podžić still maintains that the Conclusion is nothing more than the Government compromising itself. SDA and HDZ BiH adopted the Decree with the help of which they appointed their people to leading positions in some public companies, and then returned to the old law, the one that stipulates that the competent ministry manages the companies.

- To be realistic, it is obvious that HDZ and SDA needed space to place their people in some capital companies. They did that and then returned the competencies to the ministries again – Podžić told the agency Patria.