Bosnia's Federation entity "paralyzed"

Source: Tanjug

SARAJEVO -- Chairman of the House of Representatives of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (FBiH) Fehim Škaljić says that the entity is "completely paralyzed."

A view of Sarajevo (sxc.hu, stock)

This produces discontent, he told the Banja Luka daily Nezavisne Novine.
The Muslim (Bosniak)-Croat entity is one of Bosnia's two post-war entities, the other being the Serb Republic (RS).

According to Škaljić, the Federation is threatened by economic collapse and requires urgent reforms to forestall damage with devastating consequences.

"The result of the overall events since 1996 has been a deadlock of institutions, rising unemployment, poverty, the strengthening of political and other dominance of the oligarchy and corruption and crime. It produces resentment and causes reactions where dissatisfaction is expressed through demonstrations," he observed.

According to this official, the Federation is "completely paralyzed."

"Quite simply, the system has been devastated, so that the parliamentary majority has no chance to form a government and subjects that can resolve this situation - the president of the Federation and the vice-presidents - are not doing what they have to do. The result is that we have a government that does not have the support of parliament, that is spending public funds, and is in addition divided, blaming one another," added Škaljić.

He pointed out that changes to the Constitution of the FBiH were "not primarily a political issue," and that this was an argument in favor of taking measures to prevent economic collapse.

"Without that, we will not get far. We recently took out a loan from the International Monetary Fund in order to pay an existing loan, all revenues are decreasing, we are not cutting down on spending, while next year we'll be looking at almost 1.3 billion in credit obligations. All this is a realistic framework to be concerned," Škaljić was quoted as saying.