SDP threatens and acts as opposition, prosecutor who dropped GRAS investigation is in POSKOK, responsibility is being shifted, and the system is collapsing

Written by: Amina Čorbo-Zećo

When the government calls a press conference to criticize the judiciary, it is no longer a political stance, it is an institutional paradox. The Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina is, apparently, taking a cue from Our Party, and is now acting as its own opposition. SDP deputies in the Sarajevo Canton Assembly gathered to play moral arbiters.

Of course, behind all this is an attempt to defend SDP cadres in the KS Government and public enterprises that have been brought to the brink of collapse. The goal is clear: they are not responsible, but rather "those before them" – whoever those "those" may be. And among those "those" are their coalition partners, such as Elmedin Konaković, who led Sarajevo Canton as prime minister.

The SDP, as the backbone of the government in Sarajevo Canton, is now asking the Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor's Office to review the decision not to conduct an investigation into the report submitted by the Sarajevo Canton Anti-Corruption Office, which relates to events in GRAS up to 2019.

But the SDP is not the opposition. It is not a marginal political group. It is not an excluded observer. They are part of the system. They have been running the canton for the second consecutive term.

Therefore, it is extremely hypocritical to say "we do not want to put pressure on investigations" while publicly calling out the Prosecutor's Office and announcing the referral of the case to POSKOK if the decision is not changed.

It is particularly indicative that the chief prosecutor admitted that there were no objections to the dropped investigation. However, the SDP members have now decided to object and threaten with POSKOK – even though the prosecutor who made the decision not to conduct the investigation, Aid Hadžismailović, is now an employee of that very special department.

The SDP is accustomed to sending political messages from a position of power, and it has continued to do so. When associations of judges and prosecutors reacted to alleged pressures in other cases in the past, the tone was dramatic: "Stop exerting pressure." Today, when the government openly states that it expects a different decision, the question is whether it will react. Or does pressure only exist when it comes from political opponents?

If the request to review the decision is legitimate, then it is legitimate in every case. If it is pressure, then it is pressure regardless of who utters it. The principle cannot be defended selectively.

Another key question arises here: if the report on millions in damages was so serious, why has the government not insisted on institutional oversight, parliamentary debates, political accountability of management structures, and systemic measures in the past three years? They should be reminded that they have not dealt with GRAS in parliamentary seats since 2020, because the reports on the company's operations have not been on the Assembly's agenda. Perhaps it was most important for the ruling parties to know what happened up to 2019. And perhaps it is important, but why is everything now reduced to a press conference and a message to the KS Prosecutor's Office?

A government that acts as the opposition is trying to distance itself from the system it manages. And that is the most dangerous form of political manipulation because it blurs the line of responsibility.

If the judiciary made a mistake, there are mechanisms. If there is new evidence, let them submit it. If they doubt the legality of the Prosecutor's Office's work, let them initiate institutional procedures.

But public condemnation from a position of power, with political ultimatums, is not a fight against crime. It is an attempt to politically shift responsibility.

And while the government speaks as if it were the opposition, citizens are left without an answer to the key question of who actually manages the system and who will finally be held responsible for the tram accident in which Erdoan Morankić was killed and Ella Jovanović was seriously injured?

The government should also answer how it is possible that even 15 days after the accident, the public does not know the cause of the tragedy, as if, at the very least, a spaceship had crashed, and not a tram in the system they are currently managing.