EP87: Dragan Čović

Dragan Čović is one of the most powerful politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina. <br/><br/>Bosnia's political system, the most complicated anywhere in the World, is designed to give the country's three ethnic groups- Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats- equal representation in government. This sounds reasonable- until one considers that Croats only make up 15% of the population. Čović is the man who has, for over twenty years, manipulated the political system to extract benefits for the Croats. <br/><br/>My guest today would wager that the Bosnian Croats, who are Catholic, are much more powerful than the Muslim Bosniaks, who represent half of the country’s population. Worse still, he sees Čović, and the Bosnian Croats, as an instrument by which the Western powers keep Christians in charge of one of the only Muslim majority countries in Europe. <br/><br/>My guest today is Reuf Bajrović. Reuf is the Vice President of the US-Europe Alliance in Washington D.C, and a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was also the Bosnian Minister for Energy, Mining and Industry in 2015.