Negotiations on Government Formation Fail Again

Elections were held in early October and politicians still cannot agree on who will take which seat in the Bosnian Federation government.

Even after several hours of talks, leaders of the Bosniac Party for Democratic Action (SDA), Party for Bosnia-Herzegovina (SBiH), Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia-Herzegovina (HDZ BiH) and HDZ 1990 have not reached an agreement on the formation of the government of the Bosniac-Croat entity. 

Since elections were held on October 1 of last year, the Federation has been waiting for months for the formation of a government.

The federal government has not been constituted yet because of certain problems regarding the formation of authorities in Herzegovina-Neretva and Central Bosnian cantons, which has influenced the distribution of federal seats, the Federal Television reports.

Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed 

-- We were close to an agreement, but following the principle of ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’, we, unfortunately, could not sign an agreement – SDA president Sulejman Tihic said.

According to him, there is an internal agreement on which the parties have reached 90 percent of consent, but the distribution of Croat positions poses the biggest problem.

-- The SDA and SBiH had an earlier agreement and are close to an agreement on the distribution of positions in the federal government – Tihic said.

Covic: I doubt we are close to an agreement 

The president of the HDZ BiH, Dragan Covic, said they came close to reaching an agreement, but the whole set could not be solved.

-- Considering the fact that we talked at the end of the meeting today, I doubt that we are anywhere near the end of negotiations – said Covic.

The SDA and SBiH earlier reached an agreement to get five ministries each, with the SDA getting also the prime minister’s seat. It was also agreed that the Union of Independent Social Democrats in the Bosnian Federation government get the ministry of crafts, development and entrepreneurship.