SDA Names Bosnia's New Prime Minister

Leaders of the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, the main Bosniak party in Bosnia, on December 18 named Denis Zvizdic as the next president of the Council of Ministers, in effect, Bosnia's next Prime Minister.

During talks between the political parties that did best in the October general elections, it was agreed that the SDA would select the premier after it won around 275,000 votes, the largest number of votes going to any one party.

Zvizdic was one of two candidates within the SDA who were up for the position. The other was Adil Osmanovic.

"I think we made a very good choice," the heasd of the SDA, Bakir Izetbegovic, said. "Every time he was a candidate for the SDA on the lists, he got the biggest number of votes."

Zvizdic was born in 1964 in Sarajevo and is a long-time member of the SDA. He has a doctorate from the Faculty of Architecture in Sarajevo where he teaches as professor.

He was Prime Minister of the Sarajevo Canton in 2003 and later became speaker of the Sarajevo Cantonal Assembly. From 2010 to 2014 he was an MP in Bosnia's Federation entity and in the October elections he won more than 10,000 votes, running for the same position.

"I hope I will successfully respond to this obligation with the help of my colleagues," Zvizdic said on Thursday, adding that his priorities would be "the rule of law, European integration, the economy and of course the further integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina into international and regional frameworks".

The SDA, the traditional Bosniak [Muslim] party in Bosnia and Herzegovina was in recent years informally split into two fractions, one lead by the late party president, Sulejman Tihic, and the other by his deputy, Bakir Izetbegovic.

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