ZAGREB, October 10, 2018 – Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said on Tuesday that Željko Komšić, who was on Sunday elected Croat member of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Presidency mostly owing to Bosniak votes, had used strong rhetoric during his election campaign, criticising not so much him but Croatia’s president, while his (Plenković’s) messages regarding Bosnia and Herzegovina were very fair, the key message being about the equality of the country’s constituent peoples.
“Unlike (Komšić’s) messages, the messages I made as Croatia’s prime minister regarding Bosnia and Herzegovina and our sister parties there were very fair, affirmative, cooperative and clear. The key message… was about the equality of the constituent peoples,” Plenković told reporters ahead of a meeting of his HDZ party’s parliamentary group.
“Mr Komšić was elected in line with Bosnia and Herzegovina’s current election rules but it is obvious that Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina elected Dragan Čović with more than 80% of the vote, and that is why I said that that situation isn’t good,” said Plenković in reference to his statement of Monday, following the publication of Bosnian election results, when he said that the outcome of the vote was not good for the Croat people in Bosnia and Herzegovina or the country itself because “we again have a situation, thanks to the country’s current election law, in which one constituent people in the Federation entity elects the other people’s representative in the state Presidency.”
“I think that that is not good and that everyone in Bosnia and Herzegovina should work to make all three constituent peoples feel good and committed to Bosnia and Herzegovina as their homeland,” Plenković added.
He expressed regret that HDZ BiH party leader Dragan Čović was not elected to the post, saying that in the past four years Čović “made crucial progress, with Croatia’s support, regarding Bosnia and Herzegovina’s journey to the EU” and that “that fact could have been acknowledged.”
Komšić then responded that Plenković was interfering in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s internal affairs by commenting on the outcome of its elections, and confirmed that he would insist on suing Croatia if it continued with the project to build the Pelješac bridge, a project which is to connect Croatia’s southernmost peninsula of Pelješac with the rest of the country and is to be built off Bosnia’s only coastal town of Neum.
Croatian Parliament Speaker Gordan Jandroković said on Tuesday it was perfectly clear that Komšić was elected as the Croat member of the Bosnian Presidency with the votes of Bosniaks and not Croats, adding that this was neither good nor fair and that it would not be conducive to stabilising the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Speaking to reporters in Bjelovar, Jandroković said the Democratic Front president received the most votes in Sunday’s general elections “in places where there are no Croats or where there are very few Croats”, and that in areas populated by Croats “Komšić’s results were at the level of one to two percent.”
“It’s obvious that representatives of the more numerous Bosniak people elected the Croat representative,” he added.
“That’s neither good nor fair and won’t contribute to the stabilisation of the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We’ll follow the developments, we’ll be in close contact with the legitimate representatives of the Croat people in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and we’ll see which moves to make,” said Jandroković.
