Washington Summit Aims to Revive Bosnia’s reforms

24 05 2007  While US hopes talks can kickstart stalled constitutional package, few local experts are optimistic.

By Saida Mustajbegovic in Sarajevo and Gordana Katana in Banja Luka

Bosniaks and Bosnian Serbs leaders are meeting this week in Washington in an effort to revive stalled constitutional reforms in the fractured Balkan state.

While the international community is desperate to see progress on this front, most local analysts are doubtful any breakthrough will be made.

A year after parliament in Bosnia and Herzegovina rejected a set of proposed amendments to the constitution aimed at streamlining powers and centralising functions, US leaders have invited leaders of the country’s two biggest communities to knock heads together.

Haris Silajdzic, president of the Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina, SBiH, and a member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, will be one of the main Bosniak guests.

Milorad Dodik, head of the Independent Social Democrats and Prime Minister of the Republika Srpska, RS, will be the principal Serbian speaker.

Casting doubt on hopes of progress, both parties recently launched sharply opposing public campaigns on the subject of constitutional reforms.

The failed “April Package” of amendments was drawn up under the influence of the US Administration shortly after the tenth anniversary of the signing of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, whose terms are part of Bosnia’s constitution.

Intensive talks began in 2005 among eight representatives of key political parties on changes in the constitutional setup, following guidelines established by the US Institute for Peace, USIP.

By April 2006, the parties had had some success. But they failed to agree upon several important issues such as reform of the chambers of the parliament, the police and cuts in the competences of the three-member state presidency.

Silajdzic and Dodik then used the delicate issue of constitutional change - from totally opposite standpoints - to garner votes in the parliamentary elections of October 2006.

Originally, Silajdzic was the only major leader to reject the April Package, on the grounds that it was too weak and did not - as he sought - dismantle the entity structure, based around the Federation and the Republika Srpska.

On the other side, Dodik has consistently refused to countenance any serious reduction in the authority of the entities as opposed to the state.

The disagreements over the package caused a crisis both between and within the entities. In the Federation, it delayed the formation of a new government for six months after the October 2006 elections.

Enthusiasm for the amendments has since waned, and many doubt they can now be revived. “How can something that was never adopted now be amended,” Mato Tadic, a judge of the Constitutional Court said, referring to the April Package.

Zeljko Komsic, member of the state Presidency and also member of the Social Democrats, SDP, said it had been a mistake “to raise the issue of constitutional reform during a pre-election year”.

Another expert, Zarko Papic, agreed. “Had the first package been adopted last year, we would now be fighting over a second round of constitutional changes,” Papic suggested.

Before leaving for the US, both Silajdzic and Dodik repeated that they would not withdraw their demands. On May 14, meanwhile, Dodik’s party presented a new model for the future government of Bosnia, based around adding a third Croatian entity – Herceg-Bosna - to the existing two.

“There are three constituent ethnic groups living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats, therefore it is logical … to organize the state around these groups so that all three communities have some insurance for their survival,” Rajko Vasic, a key official of Dodik’s party, said.

The idea of a third Croatian entity has caught the Muslims off balance and delighted the Bosnian branch of the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ. “The current setup with two entities is unsustainable,” Miso Relota, a party official, said.

Hamza Baksic, of the daily newspaper, Oslobodjenje, however, said the recent appearance of a new union of hearts between the Croats and Serbs would not endure.

“Their sudden unity will only last while they are agreeing on the parts of the Federation which are to become part of this [Croatian] entity,” he wrote.

“It will stop when Posavina is put on the table for discussion,” he added, referring to the section of northern Bosnia that formerly had a large Croatian population but is now mostly part of the RS.

Bosnian Muslims, including representatives of Siljdzic’s party and the biggest Bosniak party, the Party of Democratic Action SDA, are fiercely opposed to the Serbs’s latest idea, which would entrench federalization in Bosnia and wreck their own hopes of centralisation.

“This federalization is practically the continuation of ethnic cleansing and … is completely unacceptable,” Beriz Belkic, member of the presidency of Siilajdzic’s party, said.

For his part, before leaving for the US, Dodik told Bosnian Serbs he was traveling to Washington to defend the Republika Srpska; there would be no change to the name of the entity or its basic rights, and no move to centralisation.

“Europe and the US are wrong to try and make the Bosnia a state with strong state-level bodies, since it is obvious this can’t work,” he said.

Sulejman Tihic, leader of the SDA, offered its own agreement on the constitutional changes a month ago. Previously, the SDA entirely supported the April Package but it has since shifted, demanding “amendments to the part related to competencies of the entities,” as Tihic put it.

While this appears to widen the breach with the Serbs further, local experts say most of the recent rhetoric of the leaders heading for Washington has been used only with the aim of creating a better starting position for the parties.

“You start with maximum demands that are politically unacceptable in order to possibly gain something that the majority may accept,” Vehid Sehic, president of the Citizens’ Forum of Tuzla, said.

However, political analyst Dino Abazovic said neither of the main parties was likely to back down in Washington and so appear to concede a key point to the other side.

“The local actors would read that as a ‘win-lose’ scenario… and that does not leave much room for optimism,” Abazovic explained.

Others experts believe the US is taking the wrong approach to Bosnia’s constitutional problem, by trying to breathe life into a set of proposals that have no real democratic legitimacy.

“A group of their experts sat together with local politicians and made proposals; they should have opened up to citizens instead,” Zarko Papic said. “Constitutional changes cannot happen in this way,” he added.

But Raffi Gregorian, deputy High Representative, told Balkan Insight that it was not crucial if no agreement was reached in Washington in the next few days, or, indeed, within the mandate of the internationally appointed High Representative.

“Constitutional reforms should be initiated but not [necessarily] completed within the OHR’s mandate,” Gregorian said. “It is a process that will last for several years.”

Saida Mustajbegovic and Gordana Katana are Balkan Insight contributors in Sarajevo and Banja Luka. Balkan Insight is BIRN`s online publication.

This article has been produced as part of BIRN’s BiH Constitutional Reforms project, which is financed by the Swiss Embassy in Sarajevo and the University of Sarajevo's Human Rights Center.