change font size

print version

copyright

Other languages:

Right Wing Fails to Topple Centrist SDA Chief

14 12 2006  While Tihic has survived the latest rebel assault, fight goes on for soul of largest Bosniak party.

By Marija Arnautovic and Saida Mustajbegovic in Sarajevo (Balkan Insight, 14 Dec 06)

The embattled leader of the largest Bosniak party in Bosnia and Herzegovina has again come out on top in the latest round of a protracted struggle for the soul of the party.

On December 9, the main board of the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, voted resoundingly in favour of keeping the current centrist leader Sulejman Tihic at the helm.
 
But the massive vote of confidence in Tihic’s leadership has failed to quash the conflict between the party’s liberal and right wing who remain unreconciled to their leader of four years.
 
While Tihic’s supporters claim party democracy has prevailed, the right-wingers are adamant that the leader must step down.
 
The outcome of the vote delighted Tihic who said he had expected to win by a smaller margin. Out of 81 votes, 71 backed Tihic, three voted against while seven abstained.
 
The right-wingers, however, claimed the vote did not reflect the real balance of opinion within the SDA.
 
Vice-President Sefik Dzaferovic, a rebel sympathiser, called for a special congress and another vote on the issue.
 
He and other right-wingers said the outcome would have been different if the vote had been held in secret.
 
Dzaferovic claimed many delegates opted for Tihic in a public vote out of a fear of reprisals.
  
Mirsad Zaimovic, head of the SDA in Zenica and another right-winger, agreed. “When the first delegate voted in Tihic’s favour, there was a round of applause from his supporters,” he complained.
 
Hasan Cengic, an SDA founder and a vocal right-winger, said the way the ballot was held contravened party statutes. “Never has a public vote such as this one taken place in the party’s 16-year history,” he said.
 
Tihic dismissed the complaints and said calls for a special congress ought to have been made at a party meeting rather than through the media.
 
The right-wing faction bases its demand for Tihic’s dismissal on his defeat at the elections for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s three-member presidency, held at the same time as parliamentary elections on October 1.
 
They stress that the electorate voted against him even though the SDA won the vast majority of Bosniak votes.
 
Tihic lost his right to represent Bosniaks on the presidency to Haris Silajdzic of the Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina, SBiH, a smaller party than the SDA.
 
Silajdzic was helped by the support he obtained from the Islamic religious leadership and some right-wing SDA members.
 
They were angry with Tihic for supporting ill-fated plans to reform the constitution, which endorsed the continuing existence of the Bosnian Serb entity, Republika Srpska.
 
During the heated public debate on the constitution, Siljadzic condemned any reforms that cemented the existence of the country’s two separate entities, demanding their outright abolition.
 
Vildana Selimbegovic, editor of the Dani magazine, said the SDA rebels clearly opposed Tihic and supported Silajdzic in the election campaign.
 
She says that SDA hardliners wanted to prevent constitutional changes in order to keep their privileges and positions, many of which would have been lost had the amendments been accepted.
 
“It is quite clear they are prepared to sell out the state in order to stay in power,” said Selimbegovic.
 
She believes their message of “vote for the SDA and Haris Silajdzic” had a significant effect on the election outcome. 
 
The SDA rift has divided print media in Bosnia and Herzegovina, too, with the mass circulation Dnevni Avaz publishing commentaries by Tihic’s foes and the Sarajevo daily Oslobodjenje forwarding counter-arguments by his allies.
 
Tihic himself claims the rift in the SDA has been spiced up by the SBiH, certain individuals in the Islamic community and Dnevni Avaz - each acting solely for its own interests. 
 
In one address he ridiculed “war profiteers and criminals who use national and religious interests as a front for achieving their goal of domination”.
 
The ideological rift inside the SDA in fact predates the row over Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constitutional amendments.
 
The party’s founder, Alija Izetbegovic, referred to these divisions back in 1997, when he spoke of his decision to stay on at the helm of the SDA out of fears of a right-wing takeover.
 
“The right wing is more aggressive and its rhetoric is more persuasive than the modest faction’s vocabulary,” he said then. 
 
Izetbegovic chose Tihic as his successor in 2002, making it clear he wanted the party to remain broadly centralist in its outlook.
 
But at the party’s Fourth Congress in 2005, two years after Izetbegovic’s death, rebels under the then vice-president, Elmir Jahic, challenged Tihic’s leadership. Tihic won by a margin of 20 per cent.
 
The new leader then made a conscious attempt to persuade the SDA to abandon Bosniak nationalist rhetoric for a more civic, multi-ethnic platform.
 
Tihic said the party needed to be open to all citizens regardless of their ethnic background. Right-wingers such as Hasan Cengic deplored the change.
 
Many observers believe Izetbegovic’s son, Bakir, currently the SDA vice-president, also opposes Tihic, though he has never said so in public.
 
Before the main board vote he only urged the media not to “add fuel to the fire”.
 
Izetbegovic voted for Tihic in the ballot but agreed with the rebels that the vote ought to have taken place in secret.
 
Oslobodjenje commentator Zija Dizdarevic said in the light of the latest failure by the rebels to topple Tihic, some might now defect to Silajdzic’s SBiH.
 
Marija Arnautovic is a Radio Free Europe correspondent based in Sarajevo. Saida Mustajbegovic is Balkan Insight’s correspondent based in Sarajevo. Balkan Insight is BIRN’s online publication.