What the Framework Plan for Joint Action of SDP and DF Entails

The President of the Social Democratic Party of BiH Nermin Nikšić and Željko Komšić, President of the Democratic Front, signed the Framework Plan for Joint Action for the 2018 General Elections at a joint session of the Main Boards of the two parties. The Plan states, among other things, that the two parties have a common vision for Bosnia and Herzegovina, based on joint action to realize common values and cooperation with other political parties, the academic community, and civil society organizations.

“The joint action of the two parties throughout BiH is, first and foremost, a matter of restoring hope and dignity to its citizens that the state of BiH can be a civic, democratic, and European state in which the rights of every citizen and nation will be equally respected. Joint action is raising our voice, opposing and preventing the division of the country along ethnic lines and the confinement of its citizens into ethnic pens, which is neither a natural nor a normal state in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Issues of fighting inequality, disenfranchisement, poverty, and class disparities should be returned to the center of economic analysis. We advocate for legislation aimed at reducing inequality among citizens as much as possible through tax and social policies,” the Plan states.

Nermin Nikšić, President of SDP BiH, emphasized in his speech that people are tired of divisions and fear and need to be given back hope and faith that politics can be conducted differently. “Social democrats can and will restore faith that it is possible to live better. We will succeed because sincerity always overcomes deception, truth always triumphs over lies in the end, and fear and lies are theirs, while truth is our weapon. Our vision is a country where there will be a place for all of us. A country where there will be equal opportunities for every citizen, regardless of where they come from or what their name is. Such a BiH is not only possible, but only such a BiH is possible. This country will once again be a country of all its people, not individuals, who have been trying to divide, rob, and enslave us for decades, convincing us that it is for our own good. Today from Sarajevo, we send a message of unity. We send a message that the time has come to defeat politics of hatred and mistrust. I am convinced that this message will spread like an echo from the Drina to the Una and from the Sava to the sea. This echo will, do not doubt it, become louder and louder, and it will resonate most strongly in October next year. It is enough for us to be observed as an experiment by those who show day after day that they are ready to fight for their privileges to the last member of their nation. Our people deserve better!” Nikšić stated.

The President of the Democratic Front, Željko Komšić, believes that the Framework Plan for Joint Action could represent a significant turning point in the lives of every citizen of this country. “Surely, it is no longer necessary to explain to anyone that the situation in the country is getting worse day by day, that the poorest and most numerous part of the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina are paying the price for two decades of rule by national parties, and that the increasing departure of entire families is the final alarm that things here must fundamentally change. We are aware that nationalists have succeeded, from the war to the present day, in establishing an extremely strong party-mafia infrastructure, that they have practically established a parallel system of power in all structures and at all levels, and that they have secured a stable voting machinery through an army of party-appointed cadres and the fear of retaliation. We can defeat them only by uniting programmatically. All parties that are programmatically left-wing and civic-oriented, intellectuals, workers, pensioners – only by acting together will we be able to remove the current political-tycoon and nationalist oligarchy from power in 2018. The votes of those who do not go to the polls, and there are almost half of them, will be decisive. It is up to us to offer people a way out of this despair in the next year, to offer them concrete solutions, because, otherwise – no one, except for the layer of party-family connected clans, will fare well in the time ahead,” Komšić concluded.

You can download the complete Framework Plan for Joint Action of SDP and DF for the 2018 General Elections Here.