An Interesting Development

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.