Croatian President to try and prevent BiH elections if agreement is not reached

Zoran Milanović
Zoran Milanović (N1/Ivan Hrstić)

If the agreement on amendments to the BiH Election Law is not reached, the general elections of 2022 should not be held and I will do everything to prevent them from happening, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said Friday.

“If no agreement is reached, the elections should not be held, I will do everything to prevent them from happening. That may not be much. At the same time, the diplomatic branch of the famous EU advocates a position that is completely contrary to Croat national interests. I am not an interpreter of Bosnian Croat interests but their position is that in case the lies and obstructions continue, elections should not be held,” said Milanovic.

He added that there is a systemic obstruction regarding the BiH Election Law talks.

“The Brussels bureaucracy is against them. You can see exactly the systemic obstruction that brought the representatives of Croats and the Democratic Action Party (SDA), the Bosniak side, to Neum for two days. And then they pressured (the Croat Democratic Union – HDZ BiH leader, Dragan) Covic, to give in. Any concession of the Croat side, not Covic, means doom. They have been brought to the edge of a gorge, to ask for alms.”

“And then who is to blame? The Croat element is to blame, why? Because it stands in the way of the success of these bureaucrats, otherwise they would return on a white horse as people who solved the problem. But what do you offer? They offer spoiled goods. Croat representatives are saying: “You have been cheating and cheating on us for years, we cannot agree to it anymore,” Milanovic said.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic also called on Bosnia and Herzegovina's Croat and Bosniak leaders on Thursday to make the extra effort to agree on a fair Election Law in that country.