Aaargh.

Bosnia hits another political crisis or two or three:

Meanwhile, Bosnia’s state government – the Council of Ministers – is facing a similar crisis after the strongest Bosniak party, the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, announced it may boycott the government over the issue of top appointments to key state bodies.

The SDA has been expressing its profound dissatisfaction on this issue since last week, after Bosnian Serb State Premier Nikola Spiric appointed a Bosnian Croat candidate as the country’s new EU negotiator, overriding SDA claims that that positions should be held by a Bosniak.

This week, the SDA and Spiric have continued their quarrel over this appointment, and over who should head the state’s Indirect Tax Administration and Communication Regulatory Agency.

… Bosnian Serb media organs, which have joined the political quarrel over the past week, cited official statistics that seem to show that Bosniaks already hold over 40 per cent of key positions in the country.

The quarrel over the division of top positions among the three main ethnic groups at state level, and the increasingly frequent outvoting of Bosnian Croat and Serb ministers in the Federation government, reflect growing tensions and animosities among Bosnian leaders, local and international analysts claim.

Which all goes to show that a system in which top jobs are allocated according to ill-defined ethnic quotas rather than merit is doomed to go nowhere fast.

It also exemplifies the deep problem in the overall ‘Bosniac’ view of Bosnia.

On the one hand they insist that the country has to stay together, all three communities sharing power nicely.

On the other, they just don’t trust the Serbs/Croats enough to make that happen, not least because they know that the Serbs/Croats do not trust them and ipso facto are untrustworthy.

This logic of mutually reinforcing distrust gurgles around in circles, and nothing gets done.

At least all the BH political parties agree on one thing: that under no circumstances are people for senior official positions to be appointed via open competition by merit.

Maybe the return of my old friend Dragan Kalinic will help restore common sense.

It was always charming to visit him in Pale to discuss the goings-on in Republika Srpska, especially when he would take me out of the main coinference room for some whispered conversations away from the microphones.