Power Struggle Shakes Bosnia's Biggest Party

Increasing tension within Bosnia's main Bosniak [Muslim] party, the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, suggests that the party leader  - who is also chairman of the Bosnian Presidency - Bakir Izetbegovic, is losing his grip, analysts say. 

Sead Numanovic, CEO of the influential Bosnian daily Dnevni Avaz, told BIRN that a "severe crisis" inside the leadership of the SDA was "obvious" after the airing of "dirty laundry" this week between Izetbegovic and prominent rebel Senad Sepic, a 38-year-old MP who was vice-chair of the party until 2015. 

This week saw a tense exchange over Sepic's replacement as director of the SDA's Political Academy.

Sepic's successor, Rashid Hadzovic, was announced after the SDA opened a competition for the role in October.

But Sepic told the Sarajevo-based website Klix.ba that his own mandate was supposed to last until February 2018 and that the competition process broke the SDA's rules.

BIRN contacted both Sepic and the SDA party headquarters but did not receive a response to its queries before publication.

Numanovic said that the spat showed fragmentation within the party was worsening. 

In the October local elections in Bosnias, the SDA lost key mayoral seats to former SDA candidates who stood and won as independents, including Fuad Kasumovic in Zenica and Amra Babic in Visoko.

Within the party itself, there is a group close to Izetbegovic, and another that is close to Bosnian Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic.

"Then you have a group of SDA romantics who cherish the idea of the SDA as an honest, moderate, conservative people's party," Numanovic added. 

Sepic is one of four rebel MPs demanding what they call the "democratization" of the SDA, ever since members of Izetbegovic's close...