BUDGET DISCUSSIONS Citizens will get elections, HDZ officials new cars!

(Patria) - The House of Representatives of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly is holding an emergency session on the agenda of which is only the report of the Joint Committee of both houses of Parliament on achieving an identical text of the law on the budget of BiH institutions and international obligations for 2020.

The Committee for harmonizing the text of the budget of BiH institutions of both houses of the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina has reached an agreement - the budget has been adopted in the text adopted by the House of Peoples with six amendments.

Jasmin Emrić (A-SDA), whose amendment was rejected in the House of Peoples, said that we are in a senseless situation.

“I went through the report and I see that the Committee accepted the amendments of the House of Peoples, and not the amendment of the House of Representatives. Isn't that absurd? When I looked at the content of these amendments, I was even more disappointed. This Joint Committee has harmonized the Budget Proposal to the detriment of two priority situations in BiH. Two current crises. 

The first is the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and this joint committee has reduced the amount by 740,000. This committee agrees that this item needs to be reduced for the remediation of economic damages, and they are increasing the item in the parliament for procurement. To make matters worse. This House adopted an amendment of 450,000 KM for the migrant crisis, and what did the Harmonization Committee do, it deleted it from the budget. There is nothing for the migrant crisis,” said Emrić.

He added that nothing was harmonized, but the work of the House of Representatives was nullified.

“How do you intend to manage the migrant crisis when you don't have an item in the budget, and you said it was important to appoint a Minister of Security precisely because of this crisis?”, added Emrić.

He emphasized that the interest of the citizens is not in new employment and the procurement of vehicles that remained in the budget, but in the remediation of damages caused by the coronavirus.

“And you reduce the amount for the remediation of these damages,” added Emrić.

Dženan Đonlagić (DF) stated during the discussion that the process of adopting the budget for 2020 can be summarized in one sentence.

“Citizens will get elections, HDZ officials new cars. Now we wonder when the next blackmail and blockades will come. They will spend capital expenditures on purchasing cars and some premises will be renovated. The goal was to complicate the process to the extreme,” said Đonlagić.

Damir Arnaut (Naša stranka) pointed out that they were committed to the budget all along for the sake of holding elections.

"Citizens will be able to say what they think about this. 754,000 KM will be spent on cars instead of for the remediation of damages due to coronavirus. And, we already have too many of them. If the elections are held, citizens will be able to say what they think about 450,000 KM going to some privileges instead of for the migrant crisis," said Arnaut, adding that not only HDZ is to blame, but also SDA and SNSD.

"HDZ came into such a position because SDA and SNSD gave them a place that does not belong to them according to the representation rules," added Arnaut. 

Adil Osmanović (SDA) emphasized that the SDA Club is doing everything to reach the Budget.

"You know that we in the House of Representatives expressed our position that we will support the Budget that came from the Presidency and that we are not for any amendments, because we are facing a shortage of time. After everything that happened, we had a Committee session today and of course, as a representative from this house, I advocated for its adoption and for the amendments from the House of Representatives to be included in the harmonized text. It was obvious that the intention was to postpone the elections and to produce another crisis in the country," said Osmanović.