Zlatko Lagumdžija

Lagumdžija (right) alongside other Social Democratic Party officials, including founder Nijaz Duraković (first row, centre)

Lagumdžija began his political career during the Bosnian War as deputy prime minister, advising then-president Alija Izetbegović.

In one particular case he advised him not to sign the Vance–Owen Peace Plan: "Mr Izetbegović was not endorsing it, but thinking out loud and saying perhaps the plan would not be so bad, that we could live with it. And some of us told him, 'Anyone who signs this plan will be dead, and not just politically…'" he told a New York Times reporter in February 1993.[5]

Izetbegović signed the peace plan in March 1993. In May 1992, Lagumdžija was with Izetbegović, Izetbegović’s daughter Sabina and his bodyguard, returning from the Lisbon negotiations, when they were surrounded at the Sarajevo International Airport by the Yugoslav People's Army, kidnapped and driven in a convoy to Lukavica, in Serb-held territory.[6]

In April 1993, Lagumdžija met with a group of citizens from Srebrenica who had journeyed through the Serb lines to Sarajevo. They informed him of the desperate situation of Srebrenica and the eastern Bosnian enclaves. In an effort to highlight the plight of Srebrenica, Lagumdžija suspended humanitarian aid donations for Sarajevo until aid was delivered to the eastern enclaves. A month later, United Nations (UN) Commander Philippe Morillon visited Srebrenica and declared the citizens under the protection of the UN.[7]

Lagumdžija with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, 4 March 2011

As a member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP BiH), Lagumdžija served as member of the national House of Representatives from 2002 to 2012. He was the president of the SDP BiH from 1997 to 2014.

At the 2000 parliamentary election, the SDP BiH formed a coalition with the Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina, a party founded and led by former wartime prime minister Haris Silajdžić, to gain the majority and force the nationalist parties out of power. They gathered a coalition of many other small parties to create the "Alliance for Change". Lagumdžija became the Foreign Minister, a post he served in from 2001 until 2002, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers, (i.e. the Prime Minister), as which he served until 2002. After protracted negotiations, disagreements and delays, he signed the Agreement on Succession Issues of the Former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on behalf of Bosnia and Herzegovina.[8]

When the SDP BiH came into political power on a platform of economic reform and anti-corruption, Lagumdžija was lauded by the Western powers as the hopeful "face of a pluralistic, united Bosnia."[9] The SDP BiH-led government facilitated the passage of the Election Law, which was not only an important step towards democracy, but also a prerequisite to Bosnia's accession to the Council of Europe.[10] The SDP BiH led the coalition government until the October 2002 general election, when the public, dissatisfied at the pace of political reform, elected the nationalist parties back into power.[11]

On 18 May 2019, Lagumdžija was removed from the SDP BiH due to his political activity in his own new political party, the Social Democratic Movement, which was in the process of being founded, and which was also supported by Bosnian Presidency member and former SDP BiH vice-president Željko Komšić.[12]

Lagumdžija with British Foreign Secretary William Hague, 27 March 2012

Following the 2010 general election, a process of formation of Bosnia and Herzegovina's Council of Ministers (i.e. the national government) had begun. The resulting election produced a fragmented political landscape without a coalition of a parliamentary majority more than a year after the election. The SDP BiH, led by Lagumdžija, and the Bosnian Serb autonomist Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), each had 8 MPs of the total 42 MPs of the House of Representatives.

The major Croat (HDZ BiH and HDZ 1990) and Serb parties (SNSD and SDS) contended that a gentlemen's agreement existed in which the chairmanship of the Council of Ministers rotates between the three constitutional nationalities. In this case, it would be the turn for a Croat politician to chair the Council. As the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ BiH) and the Croatian Democratic Union 1990 (HDZ 1990) received the overwhelming share of Croat votes in the 2010 general election, the parties demanded that a member of one of them receive the position of Chairman. The SDP BiH on the other hand, claimed that the only necessity is the ethnicity of the individual, and not the party, demanding the right to appoint a Croat Chairman from SDP BiH ranks, calling upon the right of having assumed most votes nationwide.

Lagumdžija and Croatian President Ivo Josipović in Zagreb, 4 April 2012

The European Union and the Office of the High Representative repeatedly attempted negotiations to appease the Bosniak–Bosnian and Serb–Croat divided political blocs, in parallel to the Bosnian constitutional crisis, all ending in failure. The Bosniak-Bosnian coalition insisted that the seat would have to go to them as the party that received the largest number of votes, while the Serb–Croat alliance insisted that due to the fact that according to tradition, the next Chairman of the Council of Ministers must be an ethnic Croat, it must come from an authentic Croat party (Croatian Democratic Union), and not the multi-ethnic SDP BiH.

A round of talks between party leaders was held in Mostar on 5 September 2011, hosted by Croat politicians Božo Ljubić and Dragan Čović, with Milorad Dodik, Mladen Bosić, Sulejman Tihić and Lagumdžija in attendance. The parties agreed to a further round of discussion in mid-September.[13] A meeting between the six major party leaders was held in Sarajevo on 15 September, hosted by Lagumdžija.[14] Topics discussed at the meeting included holding a national census, military assets and the Sejdić-Finci ruling. On the same day, an EU spokesperson warned that the country risked losing funding through the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance if the political situation did not stabilize.[15] Another meeting on 26 September 2011 failed as well.[16]

An agreement was finally reached on 28 December 2011 between the six political parties: the Social Democratic Party, the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), the Croatian Democratic Union, the Croatian Democratic Union 1990, the Serb Democratic Party and the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats. Vjekoslav Bevanda, a Bosnian Croat, became the new Chairman of the Council of Ministers.[17][18]

Following the government's formation and Bevanda's appointment, Lagumdžija again became Minister of Foreign Affairs, serving until 2015.[19]

Lagumdžija alongside Austrian and Hungarian Foreign Ministers Sebastian Kurz (left) and János Martonyi, 27 March 2014

As “credible efforts” towards the implementation of the Sejdić–Finci ruling remained the outstanding condition for the entry into force of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement, in June 2012, Czech Commissioner Štefan Füle launched a High Level Dialogue on the Accession Process (HLAD) with Bosnia and Herzegovina, tackling both the Sejdić–Finci issue and the need for a coordination mechanism for the country to speak with a single voice in the accession process. Talks were held in June and November 2012, with little success.[20]

In the summer of 2012, HDZ BiH leader Dragan Čović and Lagumdžija agreed on the indirect election of the Bosnian Presidency members by the Bosnian Parliament, but the deal was not turned into detailed amendments. The HDZ BiH kept calling for electoral reform to prevent new Komšić cases. The same Željko Komšić left the SDP BiH shortly after, in dissent with the agreement which would have excluded him from acceding to power again. The SDA also opposed it, as it would have created a further asymmetry, with one Presidency member (from Republika Srpska) elected directly, and two elected indirectly.[20]

In February 2013, the European Commission decided to step up its involvement, with the direct facilitation of talks by Füle, in coordination with the Council of Europe's secretary-general Thorbjørn Jagland.[21] In March and April 2013, with the support of the Director-General for Enlargement Stefano Sannino, the EU Delegation in Sarajevo facilitated a series of direct talks between party leaders, with no concrete outcome.[22][20]

Lagumdžija as Minister of Foreign Affairs, 2001

At the end of 2001, six citizens of Algerian origin (the so-called "Algerian Six") were accused of planning a terrorist attack on the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo. They were taken into custody in October, and the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Lagumdžija then being prime minister) revoked their citizenship in November. After a 3-month-process, the Supreme Court of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina ordered their release based on lack of evidence.

However, Washington came out with a request for their extradition because "the U.S. still believes they are a threat to American interests and that the US Government refused to publicly disclose evidence to the court in Bosnia and Herzegovina because it would endanger its methods of intelligence-gathering." While the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina was deciding about this request, protests broke out in front of the Sarajevo prison. Eventually, Lagumdžija's government yielded to the demand, and the six were deported to Guantánamo Bay.[23] In 2009, an investigation by the Cantonal prosecution of Sarajevo against Lagumdžija, the ex-Federal Minister of Interior Tomislav Limov and others involved was launched but later dropped. Another one was launched three years later, but it was dropped quickly too. Two of the three that returned to Bosnia still hold Lagumdžija responsible for their illegal imprisonment and filed a lawsuit against the state.[24]

In September 2003, Lagumdžija and Munir Alibabić, the former director of the Federal Intelligence and Security Service (FOSS), were accused of conspiring to take over the government by Ivan Vuksić, the FOSS director at the time. The accusations were based on the illegal recordings of telephone conversations between the two men. The Sarajevo daily paper Dnevni avaz picked up the story and ran a series of articles which attacked Lagumdžija and blamed him of being behind the August 2003 explosions that had taken place in Sarajevo. He denied the accusations and released a public statement to the court, which read in part, "Any well-informed and well-intentioned person will know that all these accusations are based on vicious lies, and that their progenitors are provoking a situation, which would bring them to face justice in court in any organized democratic state."[25] The court dismissed the accusations, Lagumdžija eventually sued Dnevni avaz for libel and the newspaper was ordered to pay him 10,000 BAM in damages.