How does the goverment in Bosnia and Herzegovina function
The Primeminister and five hundred ministers
In the last five years over two thousand citizens of
Bosnia and Herzegovina had the ID of a member of
parliament, some five hundred were ministers, and a two
dozen prime ministers and presidents of states. Of course,
just a small number of those represented a state that was
internationally recognized in the spring of 1992, while
others were officials of quasi-states, of which the
shortest life had the Autonomous Region (just for
a few days - Republic) of Western
Bosnia, while the Croatian Republic (Community)
of Herceg-Bosnia
and the Republic of Srpska
lasted until the signing of the first international
juridical arrangements for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Then
the Croatian quasi-state was abolished by the will of the
West, and the Serbian became in Dayton one of the states
as a part of the integral Bosnia and Herzegovina, which,
on the other hand, in signed agreements is not defined
neither as confederacy (as it is sometimes entitled by
Western media), nor as union (as it is all the time named
by media of Republic of Srpska), so that the Bosnians
got the chance to live in an absolutely rare country, at
least considering that, contrary to 99 percent of the
members of the United Nations, is not defined in the
official name neither as republic, nor kingdom, nor
principality, but is plainly called Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
That country consists of two territorially almost
identical parts that are, on the other hand, politically
constituted in totally different ways. While the
Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is divided into
cantons (or counties) as their federal parts, the
Republic of Srpska is a unitary state. Out of this
difference comes the fact that the Federation today has
much more different ministers and Members of parliament
in federal and cantonal parliaments, and consequently the
system of decision-making in this Bosnian entity is far
more complex. All the decisions that are made on federal
level, in parliament, government or
president-vice president, are subject to national
(ethnical) veto, so that on the state level (the
Federation is in the Constitution of 30 March 1994
defined as a "state in Bosnia and Herzegovina")
it is not possible to make any single decision that would
not be opposed by one of the sides. Beside the fact that
with this it is hard to imagine that the state would
function (especially in a situation when it comes out of
focus of the international community), it subvents
eternal rule of those parties that are in power now in
the Federation, since the constitution of the state
institutions is made in such a way that the bypassing of
the national consensus does not provide function to any
political or civil mode of the functioning of Federation
of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The effective function of the government is possible only
in cantons (which also have their parliaments,
governments and presidents, i.e. governors) which are
practically the areas where the national leaderships
could flourish uninterrupted (although none of the cantons
or counties can not determined by the name of a major
nation). Therefore, while in the Federation the national
consensus is brought to absurd, in the cantons the
national rights are defined as the rights of the
minorities. However, today the Federation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina has more than five hundred Members of
parliament (both federal and cantonal), ministers (again
both federal and cantonal) and deputies of ministers
which trough the institutions of the system, and by the
national key, are blocking every decision, and even those
that are obviously in common interest. The federal
institutions are in this way getting a decorative
character, while the real political decisions are made on
the level of the ruling parties (SDA and HDZ), which, of
course, are not under international arbitrage and
systematical decision making. It seems a bit absurd, but
HDZ and SDA are in a way incited to form new institutions
of quasi-states.
M.J.
translated and posted by Željko Heimer, 2 March 1997
