NEUM, January 30 (FENA) – President of the SDA Bakir Izetbegović said that during the negotiations of political parties from the Federation of BiH on changes to the BiH Election Law in Neum this weekend they were very close to an agreement, while the HDZ BiH President Dragan Čović said that we are entering the election year unprepared.
Although they all agreed certain progress has been made, none of them gave a detailed description of the results of the talks.
They said the talks would resume in Sarajevo next week.
Izetbegović said, addressing the media, that it seemed at moments the whole work would be completed in Neum. According to him, the issues concerning the appointments in the House of Peoples were solved and they were close to an agreement on the Presidency of BiH as well.
“We all put in maximum effort,” Izetbegović said, adding that he was pleasantly surprised by the stance of the opposition, primarily NIP and SBB.
“We are moving forward. As for the integrity of the process, what will make things more convincing, the fairness of the process itself, we all agreed on that. We have 80 pages of various amendments that we will adopt,” said Izetbegović.
On the other hand, the leader of the HDZ BiH, Dragan Čović, said there has been certain progress and that there is room for an agreement. He thanked everyone for taking part and putting efforts in the talks.
“A certain step forward has been made, some will say that there is little left to be agreed. There is a firm ground – for the first time we put specific proposals and initiatives on the table. We gave specific proposals to the Election Law regarding the House of Peoples of the Federation BiH and the BiH House of People, as well as the Presidency members,” he said.
According to Čović, what matters the most is that all open issues have been clarified and that all proposals are in line with the European standards.
If the stances regarding the election in the House of Peoples and the Presidency of BiH are harmonized, everything else will be solved easier, stressed Čović.
“I won’t speak about my optimism, it has been wasted over the past year,” said Čović, adding that “we are entering the election process unprepared.”
He says the international community has shown that it cares about Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also that BiH politicians must make their own decisions.
He added that last night they discussed the electoral model for the Federation of BiH, through the ten cantons with two electoral lists that could guarantee that representatives of the Bosniak or Croat people can elect their representatives.
“We then received an additional proposal from the Bosniak side. I think that if we did the same thing with serious work six months ago, we certainly would have reached an agreement,” concluded the president of the HDZ BiH.
