The BiH Presidency has appointed Martina Mlinarevic Sopta as ambassador to the Czech Republic, and the writer from Ljubuški does not meet the requirements for appointment because she does not have a university degree.
This case was reported to SIPA by a person employed by the joint bodies, who also forwarded the report to the Frontal.
Martina Mlinarević was nominated for the ambassador in the Czech Republic by Zeljko Komsic, but formally as chairman of the Presidency, Milorad Dodik signed her election.
In the biography she submitted, Sopta Mlinarević cited under the item education: “Secondary Secondary School Mostar, Dental Technician” and “University of Mostar, Study of English Literature and Croatian”. However, Sopta Mlinarević did not graduate and it was unnecessary to cite the faculty she attended in this regard, although she found a way to express herself in a neutral way and not to sound as though she had claimed to have graduated from college (she did not state that she was an English teacher).
Still, it is a matter of masking irregularities, as the biography must indicate the degrees obtained, not the enrolled and unfinished faculties. The scam was discovered when Mlinarević first received an agremon from the Czech Republic, and an invitation from the BiH Foreign Ministry to submit documentation and respond to the training that all ambassadors undergo. The diploma was not delivered, and unofficially Sopta Mlinarević told the person in charge of legal affairs on October 15 via telephone that she “told the presidency that she did not have a diploma”.
If this is true, the responsibility can easily be transferred to Komsic, who proposed it, and then misled Dodik, who signed the appointment to a non-eligible candidate.
There is no need to confuse here that the Czech Republic has given the agreman, because the question of the conditions that the candidate fulfills is only a matter of BH regulations. For appointment to an ambassadorial function, the law provides for a few simple conditions: That he is a proposed BiH citizen, that he is not being prosecuted, that he knows English or any of the official languages of EU countries, and that he has a university degree! Therefore, her appointment would be a violation of the laws of BiH, and thus the country to which BiH sends her has nothing to do with it.
What is even greater is the affair that the whole case does not go public, and all the actors are complicit. Even the Foreign Office did not react more sharply to irregularities. It is interesting that the “mole” in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of BiH so far worked quite actively, so the elected media always had information about who the ambassadors and consuls were, so a campaign would be conducted against them. The only exception was the Serbs and Croats proposed.
Mlinarević is a Croat, but the proposal is “halal member of the Presidency” by Zeljko Komsic, so the case is not interesting at all to the media who “regularly monitor illegal activities”. In translation, we pursue only “theirs” and “ours” do not touch whatever they are.
What is likely to be the plan is to cover up the whole case and, in silence, Sopta Mlinarević quickly graduate from one of the “university paradises” in BiH. Another possibility, mentioned in an official note, is that Mlinarević claims that she is allowed in the Czech Republic to transfer her undergraduate status to a university in Prague. What is still illegal and problematic is that instead of representing the country, she completes education at the expense of the state. At least for the “sharp pen” that so much criticizes corrupt practices, and for the member of the presidency who proposed it, who swears by legalism and laws.