Lawmaker: Security Minister should have done a better job

N1

Bosnia’s Security Minister should have been doing a better job instead of being the ‘spokesperson for one party’, state lawmaker Lazar Prodanovic, who is a member of a party that submitted an initiative for the minister’s dismissal, told N1 on Thursday.

‘We are dissatisfied with what Mektic is doing throughout his mandate. He is the spokesperson of one party, without a serious approach toward the job he is supposed to be doing,’ he said, criticising Security Minister Dragan Mektic over his frequent press conferences and saying he ‘should work more and talk less.’

The House of Representatives (HoR) on Tuesday rejected to consider an initiative for the dismissal that came from representatives of parties within the coalition in power in Republika Srpska (RS), Bosnia’s Serb-dominated semi-autonomous entity, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) and the Democratic People’s Alliance (DNS).

‘We submitted the initiative when the situation with the migrant crisis culminated. He minimised the seriousness of this crisis, and a number of his moves contributed to Bosnia not having a response to the migrant crisis like other countries in the region do,’ Prodanovic, who is a member of the SNSD, said.

Following the House of Representatives decision to remove the dismissal initiative from the agenda for the session, SNSD and DNS lawmakers left the room in protest.

Mektic is a member of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS), which is within a coalition opposing the SNSD in the RS, but represents Bosnian Serbs in state-level institutions.

Prodanovic also criticised the current State House of Representatives, saying it has not been productive enough throughout its past mandate.

Prodanovic said that his party acted as the opposition throughout the past mandate in the sense that it ‘acted in accordance with our interests and the interests of the RS’ within the framework of Bosnia as established in the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the war in the country.

‘Most did not achieve any results for Bosnia, and the HoR did not achieve any results for the RS within Bosnia,’ he said.

The composition of the HoR does ‘not fit the will of the people, in this case, those in the RS,’ he said.