The High Representative and EU Special Representative, Valentin Inzko, announced today that he would have to “take the initiative in Mostar”.

It is now a well-known fact that yesterday the Mostar City Council once again failed to elect a City Mayor –at their seventeenth attempt.

“Despite the OHR’s best efforts to get Councillors in the Mostar City Council to perform their duties conscientiously we’re witness to a cynical manipulation of yesterday’s secret ballot,” said HR/EUSR Inzko. The City of Mostar has once again been left without a mayor and without a budget.

Appeals by Mostar’s citizens and strikes by the city administration workers over the last thirteen months have fallen on deaf ears. “The Councillors and the parties they represent have lost sight of the fact that they have been elected to serve the people and not their own interests”, said HR/EUSR Inzko.

Some councillors have gone to considerable effort to prevent the Statute from working in an effort to return to the administrative division of the City on ethnic lines. “I will not countenance such retrograde policies,” said HR/EUSR Inzko. “The Citizens of Mostar deserve progress not regression”, he said.

Describing the Council’s call for an extension to the Decision on Temporary Financing through the Bonn powers as “not serious”, the High Representative underlined the fact that he had taken such a decision twice before, in good faith, to give the Councillors time to put their house in order. “But nothing has changed in the 401 days since the election,” said Inzko. “The sitting Councillors have now lost all the respect that ought to be vested in their posts”.

“I am now considering several options and will discuss this matter with the Steering Board of the Peace Implementation Council next week”, Inzko confirmed today.