Both you and the United Opposition List were unpleasantly surprised by OSCE; OSCE disqualified a number of candidates from your list, only to reinstate them in the last moment. Do you think that this "affair" was the consequence of OSCE's fumbling or do you think that it is the result of certain political manipulations?
I am still at the top of the United Opposition List, although it was much easier to notice that I was disqualified for a while, according to our state-controlled media who couldn't hide their glee at the fact that OSCE had disqualified myself and a number of other honorable people who carry the image of the United List, for example Bogic Bogicevic, Nijaz Skenderagic, Ivan Lovrenovic, Stanko Sliskovic. Them and a huge number of people who are the essence of the United List.
Because of that affair I became newsworthy for the TV news programs. The last time I made the news was on May 22, 1993, when I was wounded. I was told that in 1993 one couldn't see happiness on the faces of announcers. I suppose they were ashamed to show it. Because, at the time, I represented this state. In any case, this affair is the result of combined influence of people who demonstrated their inaptitude and those who demonstrated their dishonesty.
OSCE administration has made a huge mistake on this occasion. I knew that Bosnia is a miracle, but I didn't know that I was a miracle of nature, that I was 340 years old, still alive and kicking, as their computer program said... That sort of procedure is unacceptable whichever way one looks at it.
Obviously, you were upset by the whole thing. The whole United List election campaign has been followed by incidents and accusations. Starting with the attack on your activist in Cazin and ending with the disruption of your rally in Gradacac. Has the goal been achieved? Have you been prevented from conducting the election campaign as you would have liked to?
Quite the opposite. I think that they did us a big favor. We, in the United List, gathered around a single idea, the idea of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Not any kind of Bosnia-Hercegovina, but Bosnia-Hercegovina as a united state, democratic all over its territory, prosperous country in which live people who get their passports in order to travel abroad and not to flee from their own country. We are honorable people. I do not want to speak about myself; I will tell you about Bogic Bogicevic, a man who persisted in the defence of the Bosniak nation before a huge number of newly composed muslims, or these running on batteries, decided to defend its own people. While Bogicevic defended Bosniak people, these "muslims" were trying to figure our how to win favor of those who were pressuring Bogicevic to step on the neck of the Bosniak people. We have one Stjepan Kljuic, who has spent all of this war in Sarajevo, and shared the fate of thousands of his compatriots. Or, for example, Selim Beslagic, who has done a lot for Tuzla; I do not hesitate to say that he was the leader of the patriotic movement which defended Tuzla and the surrounding area in the best possible way. As they say: in the Tuzlan way. By defending Tuzla in the Tuzlan way, they defended the idea of Bosnia-Hercegovina too.
On the other side are people who volunteer to their aunts and uncles to go serve in embassies abroad or, although lousy students, suddenly become advisers for economic problems while world class managers go as volunteers to defend Sarajevo. Therefore, while some were volunteers, through SDA, in Washington, the others as volunteers broke into houses in Vozuca [recaptured Serb majority town in north central Bosnia] so that they can live there. (...) We are ready for a tough battle if someone wants a battle. First, we are offering a discussion about real problems.
Take Gradacac as an example. The aim of the incident was to intimidate people at the start and prevent the United List parties to organize. I was in Gradacac in 1992 as the vice-president in the Government. The first person to show up in Gradacac as the representative of the Bosnian state. I went over the territory then controlled by "Herceg-Bosna" and refused to ask for a "Herceg-Bosna" pass from [Mate] Boban; I went as a vice-president of Bosnia-Hercegovina, dressed in a camouflage uniform posing as a pilot who was going to Dubrave [airport near Tuzla] through the territory controlled by our coalition partner. I was in Gradacac on the same day when others were in Bosanski Brod. Gradacac stayed in one peace after my return from there. On the other hand, Bosanski Brod fell soon afterwards because our coalition partner who was in Zagreb at the time sold the town together with its people, Posavljaci.
Has anyone of your candidates withdrawn his or hers name from the list after these attacks?
No, not one person has given up. Many have told us that they had accepted to be on our list because they considered our list to be the list of honor. When this is over, a month or a year from now, these people can with pride say that in the 1996 elections they were on the only list which supported a new Bosnia- Hercegovina, the only one which has a future. Moreover, many of them accepted to be on the list to express their support, since they are not interested in politics; after the incidents these people would come to our headquarters and demand to have as many campaign appearances as possible. Therefore those attacks were counterproductive.
How does the election campaign terror fit in with the extremely undemocratic behavior of the "main" political parties in other parts of Bosnia-Hercegovina?
In reality, there are three separate territories in Bosnia-Hercegovina, three police forces, three armies and three psychological territories. On the territory under the control of Mladic's Army we couldn't find people who would be willing to run on our list, for any one of the parties (SDP, HSS, MBO or the Republican party) , and remain living in that territory. Large number of people called to express their support but they couldn't publicly express that support because they live under a criminal regime which would probably execute those people, either after or before a trial. Nevertheless, we formed lists of candidates , mostly with people who had escaped from those territories.
On the other hand, there is the territory under the control of HVO. The conditions there differ from one place to another. In some places we managed to get organized. For example, in Livno. However, when we arrived to Livno, our meeting was interrupted because of a bomb threat. Unfortunately, in other places the situation is much more difficult; in those places no one dared to run as a candidate on our list, even the people who live abroad. As we have been told, in case they did run on our list, there were two possible outcomes: the better one was that their house would be blown up and the worse one that they would be blown up together with the house.
Then, there is the territory controlled by the Bosnian Army. There, nobody's house has been blown up, nor has anyone been killed but there are other methods for pressure. Take Bihac and the arrest of our fliers as an example. Obviously, we are dealing with people who joined the ruling party because they wanted to substitute one single-party state with another one which is divided in three ethnic single party states; to them it must seem natural to ban an opposition party flier because it attacks the ruling party, as was written in the warrant. This demonstrates the unmodified mode of thinking combined with the primitivism which has always been there. The flier on which was written that "peace demands new people" was declared an attack on the ruling party. It is interesting that they copied the flier as "peace demands people" instead of "new people". Even that was incriminated as an attack on the ruling party.
SDP and the United List have taken a clear position with respect to the claim that SDA is behind everything good and bad in this country. You were wounded on your official function; as a professional you could have stayed abroad once you recovered, but you came back. Do you find it personally offensive when president [Izetbegovic] claims that only SDA worked for the defense and good of this country?
I can understand if the president said this because of the election campaign euphoria. Maybe because he thinks that it is permissible to offend others during an election campaign. I must admit that I was hurt.
I was especially hurt because this came from the president who knows very well that the people from the United List have done a lot for this country and for its survival. They cannot fool anyone with the story that SDA saved the people and the country, that it organized the Army. This is simply not true and everyone knows that.
I'll remind you of the case of Hakija Turajlic, who was killed on official duty. I was with him in the government, when he was the acting president of the first and the only patriotic government in Bosnia-Hercegovina during this war. He was murdered. It is my duty to state this, because it hurt so much: he is the example of how people are easily forgotten. Especially those who didn't promote the ruling party. Hakija Turajlic was a man who represented a new Bosnia at the time of hopelessness, a man who built bridges towards all sides of the world: Islamic world, America, Europe and Russia. He was murdered because he represented a new Bosnia. It is well known that he was murdered by the chetniks. But the way in which he was treated shows clearly that his co-workers have treated him unfairly and are now unfairly treating his family.
I was hit by a grenade soon after that. When that happened, I said to myself that if I survived no peasant was going to force me out of this city. Because they don't have a right to do that, they don't understand this city, nor this country. These people think that they can only take, steal, from a city, country or people, grab as much as possible and expel all those who have a different vision.
All my property was on the chetnik side. I didn't worry about that because I knew that my most valuable property was in my head. That's why I, as well as a number of others, feel humiliated and offended when I hear that everything good or bad in Bosnia today is due to SDA. Of course, the bad is "the result of objective circumstances". This tells us that in SDA there are a lot of former Communist Party members. They used to speak like that: "results of objective circumstances".
How do you assess the contribution of SDA since 1990?
It is true that all that is good in Bosnia is not due to SDA, but due to the Bosnian people, patriots, those people who sent their children to defend their lives, families , honor and Bosnia-Hercegovina with their bare hands. Four years ago, SDA didn't call its members to join the Army; they called on all citizens. When they founded the patriotic government, they didn't rely on their members, but on all citizens. On the other hand, it is true that SDA is behind everything bad in this country.
This country was defended with a heart. I sincerely hope that we are entering a period in which this country will be defended and built with a brain. It is easy to defend Sarajevo with other people's children, and to conquer Sorbonne and Harvard with one's own children. Today, the most talented children should defend this country by studying hard at Sorbonne and Harvard.
I know that the people from the United List were optimists before the start of the election campaign. Am I wrong when I sense that that optimism is even stronger today, after a series of very well attended rallies?
That is correct. I was present at a rally where a young man from Tuzla concluded his speech by saying: "We will certainly win, because we have nothing to loose!"
Isn't that political minimalism?
No, not at all. Minimalism is me saying that we have won by overcoming fear from support for a seemingly utopian idea.
I've been pleasantly surprised by the results of public opinion polls since April. The United List appeared at the right moment. Had we appeared earlier, we would have been accused of being political opportunists. We simply wanted to see whether we could unite; if we could do that, then we could unite the country as well. It was more difficult to unite these five parties than to unite HDZ, SDS and SDA. They can't do it, but we can.
Had the United List appeared later, it would have been too late. I've noticed in the polls that the number of our supporters has increased twofold since April. Maybe that makes sense, since in April the number of those who didn't intend to vote was very large. Now those undecided voters have found a party they can vote for. This list has also been crucial for me because I've realized that the idea which we support is exactly the same idea which I supported before the elections in 1990 and during the war: the idea of Bosnia-Hercegovina as a normal, European, democratic and prosperous state. I've been searching for a political force which can articulate this idea and offer it to Bosnia-Hercegovina.
I don't expect spectacular election results, I don't expect our triumph, simply because I think that the ideas of the United List will fare differently in different parts of Bosnia-Hercegovina because of our inability to reach our supporters, their fear and because we haven't received sufficient support from the media.
It was to be expected that the state-controlled media would not assist your promotion, but we were promised the assistance from the media supported by the international community. That project is rather late. Your comment?
The international community has shamefully failed in its support for the independent media. That is inexcusable. Horrible. They've been saying that they would establish an independent media network for nine months now. In nine months anyone can at least make a child, and they were not capable, although they had large resources, to solve that problem. Support for the independent media is also miserable as far as the international factor is concerned, especially when one has in mind how much is spent for other things. I hope that people from NGOs, various alternative parliaments and institutions won't be offended, but there was enough money to build and launch a satellite and buy satellite antennas for everyone with a TV.
How much will the lack of opportunities for public promotion affect the final election results?
Significantly, but we don't find that discouraging. By providing an opportunity to vote for the United List and for the idea supported by the United List we are getting closer to the idea of normal and prosperous Bosnia. If that idea doesn't win today, it will win tomorrow. It will win in the future. Only then will Bosnia-Hercegovina get on the road to prosperity. Those people who today vote for that idea will know that all that is good in this country is due to the ideas supported by the United List and that all that is bad happens because of those people who have abused their authority.
The ruling parties keep trying to divide their political plans into two parts: supposedly, now they are working on the establishment of nations and, once that is finished, they will try to improve the living conditions of the people who make up those nations. What do you think about this approach?
This is a false dilemma. At the time there was another false dilemma: whether to save Bosnia or Bosniaks? There is no Bosnia without Bosniaks. They are doomed if separated. (...)
Before the elections in 1990, many publicly proclaimed that they would vote for civic parties, but when left alone in front of a ballot box they gave their votes to national parties. Will this be repeated in this elections?
I think that many from the ruling parties will be unpleasantly surprised, because they will be the victims of this trend. We received messages from a lot of places, asking us not to campaign there because of fear and intimidation, but to wait for the results on the election day.
What is going on? They've become "communists", they have a totalitarian party and a state; this is a key difference. People are afraid of them, afraid to express their opinions publicly, but in front of a ballot box, when the big brother cannot see them, they will vote for someone else. Because of that, I am an optimist and expect that the United List will achieve good results in the forthcoming elections.
Prof. Zlatko Lagumdzija was attacked by unidentified persons soon after this interview was published and suffered minor injuries. The United List won 2 seats (out of 42) in the Union of Bosnia-Hercegovina parliament and 11 seats (out of 140) in the Muslim-Croat Federation parliament in the September 14 elections.
Translated on 10/14/96