The most interesting thing about the recently reported
HDZ-SDA proposal on reforming the process of electing Croat and Bosniak
members of the Bosnian presidency is that it clearly delineates two separate
entities within the Croat-Bosniak Federation.
This never happened during the controversial “Prud Process”
abandoned in 2009, which proposed reconstituting Bosnia along the lines of four
territorial units, so the outcry that has greeted the latest proposal is not
surprising.
According to the Oslobodenje newspaper, the agreement
between the leaders of the HDZ and SDA stipulates that for the purposes of
electing two of the members of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, the Federation
will be divided into two units. One will comprise the Posavina, Una-Sava,
Western Herzegovina, Herzegovina-Neretva, and Central Bosnia Cantons, with the
other made up of the Tuzla, Zenica-Doboj, Sarajevo, and Bosnian Podrinje Cantons
and Brcko District.
The publication of the proposal has already provoked a
firestorm of opposition, most notably from the SDP, which claims that it paves
the way for a three-way division of Bosnia.
But the agreement stresses that the division into two units
would be solely for the purpose of electing members of the Bosnian presidency, rather
than the creation of two separately governed entities. It effectively proposes creating two electoral constituencies, rather than any kind of administrative entities. (Although it would have the interesting effect of creating a link between "constituents" and the presidency member they have elected.) More importantly, the
actual composition of the two units could never realistically form the basis of
three way division of Bosnia because the first unit, though containing the vast majority of Bosnia's Croat population,
has one overwhelmingly Bosniak canton, Una-Sana, and another, Central
Bosnia, where power has been steadily shifting demographically and politically
from the Croats to the Bosniaks. Any future Croat entity in Bosnia is unlikely
to include these cantons.
Nevertheless, this agreement has once again raised the
possibility of a new two-way division within the Federation that groups
together existing cantons, albeit not the right ones to form the basis of the
third entity that many Bosnian Croats dream of.
