SDP was never a social democratic party, and Komšić's DF is a classic populist party

SDP was never a social democratic party – claims Salih Fočo, a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo, for the Bosnian news agency Patria (NAP). This party, he says, in a way established itself as a successor to communism, but not as a genuine social democratic idea.

After the SDP suffered a complete electoral debacle on October 12, party president Zlatko Lagumdžija is attempting to unite left-wing parties, i.e., those parties that, as he himself says, advocate social democracy. However, experts like Salih Fočo remind that all previous attempts to revive social democracy in BiH have very quickly failed.

- Those who have so far tried to reform the SDP have not succeeded and have most often been declared dissidents. Let us recall that the first group left the SDP with Miro Lazović and Ivo Komšić, who formed the Social Democratic Union, which also fragmented – recalls Professor Fočo.

- The last one to leave the SDP is Željko Komšić, who achieved much greater success alone than in the SDP, which has an infrastructure and a tradition 67 years long. However, even what Komšić has done cannot be considered social democracy, but rather a populist party, positioned between the right and the center. Regardless of what Komšić individually thinks, when you look at his program, you see that it is acceptable to the masses from social democracy, which is why he ultimately won the elections – states Fočo.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had 98 political entities in the last general elections or more than 200 entities in the 2012 local elections, says nothing else, Fočo believes, than that it is still a politically immature society, which urgently needs to be profiled, writes Patria.