Petritsch's Power(lessness)

by Sejad LUKICIN

Oslobodjenje, Sarajevo, Federation Bosnia-Hercegovina, B-H, December 21, 2000

For three days in a row (between Monday and Wednesday) protests took place under the window of the Wolfgang Petritsch's office in Sarajevo. On Monday Bosniaks expelled from Bratunac demonstrated, a day later Bosniaks from Kotorsko near Doboj, and the series of rallies was concluded by pensioners. The demonstrators, in principle, demanded the same - more rights and justice for themselves. Refugees from Bratunac insist on better security in their hometown, Bosniaks from Kotorsko are dissatisfied with the distribution of, as they claim, their land to Serbs. The pensioners are interested in regular and for BH conditions more-or-less decent pensions. In the series of these demonstrations the most interesting part is the address they approached. Besides the series of local, cantonal, entity, all the way to state institutions, the demonstrators chose the Office of the High Representative (OHR) and Wolfgang Petritsch personally. It is not difficult to figure our what motivated their choice. In ambassador Petritsch, partly because of his powers, and partly because of his actions, many Bosnians and Hecegovinians recognize the true chief of the state. Of course, such reasoning is mostly due to the inefficiency of the domestic institutions. Petritsch is frequently forced to do their work. But that also means that he takes upon himself the responsibility for imposed laws and decisions. The decisiveness demonstrated by Petritsch during his tenure seems to be slowly beginning to backfire. Accounts, good and bad, instead of to the domestic politicians are now being sent to the international community and its most distinguished representatives, Petritsch and Robert Barry. Is that what Petritsch and Barry wanted to achieve? If their goal was to demonstrate their own power in BH and the power of the international community, then they did a bad favor to the BH nations. They will leave one day, and the authorities they leave behind will be incompetent just as those they encountered when they arrived. If, on the other hand, their task was to stabilize BH, the recent protests showed them how far they are from that goal. The protests also revealed that the power displayed by Petritsch and Barry from time to time is an excellent shield for the domestic politicians and their powerlessness.

Diwanhana

History of Sickness

by Fatmir ALISPAHIC

Oslobodjenje, Sarajevo, Federation Bosnia-Hercegovina, B-H, November 27, 2000

It is obvious that the political future of this part of Bosnia-Hercegovina (BH) will be determined by the post-election agreement between the SDP and Party for BH (SzBH). The loose anti-Tudman coalition [in Croatia] had more in common than these two parties, until yesterday anchored in differences. The international pressure to send the SDA to retirement, and above all passion to assume power is pushing the SDP and SzBH to paint over their views and policies. These two parties do not intend to explain inconsistency of their policies, in which the (op)position status is adjusted to the interests rather than based on principles. How would the SzBH and its leader explain to the public their earlier affinity to SDA's policies as the antipode of the multiethnic platform promoted by the SDP? How would the SDP explain to its supporters that it is making a coalition with people who to this day share couch with religious nationalists from the SDA? To what extent the barter of principles for portfolios can be fatal is demonstrated by political fates of some individuals who castrated their anti-nationalist credibility by joining at the time the Coalition for Centralized and Democratic BH. Is it worth to spend a year or two in the muddy armchair of the Minister for Social Issues if that is an escape from which a healthy liberal idea cannot recover. It is obvious that no one in the SDP and SzBH is considering the consequences that clumsily put together "alliance for changes" can inflict on their individual futures. That problem cannot be spotted in SzBH, because that party, after finding itself on the receiving end of the mercy-club [after leaving the SDA, Silajdzic was attacked, clubbed by a SDA supported, in western Bosnia], proved itself as a passionate fan of power. Although the SDP had a role of a puppet in Alija's wartime presidency, it managed to pull out from the embrace of dishonorable past. The SDP will have a hard time justifying subjugation of opposition principles to a deficient conquest of power. It is clear that the reliance of the SDP on its election results would make this party into merely a strong opposition party. If the SDP remained in opposition, that would leave the SzBH in the open space framed by its earlier decisions, in mud of ideological alliance with the Bosniak religious nationalism. Secondly, that would endanger the likelihood that the SDP would in two years improve on the achieved results. Why? After the rebirth of the SDS and the HDZ, supported by international election engineering, it is difficult to imagine that Bosniaks would accept that only they become trailblazers and opt for changes. That one-sided "vote for changes" stinks too much to believe in the honest final outcome. Secondly, the SDP has before the elections already selected people for future government jobs, which produced lobbying clans, internal enmity and cracks; very few thought about the struggle for the idea of social democracy in that commotion and struggle about the insufficient number of government jobs, and consequently the SDP condemned itself to fight for power at all costs. That is the consequence of the "infusion" of new cadre, ideological immigration, which degraded veterans who kept the party alive during the most difficult time of inquisition [during the war]. Simply, the SDP does not have the strength to remain in opposition. What good can the "alliance for changes" bring to this multiethnic part of BH, apart from pushing the SDA from power? Seven goals placed by the SDP in its platform of the future alliance are in no way different from those advocated by the SDA. There is democracy, return, economic recovery, and other phrases. It seems that the only difference is that this platform will be advocated by the parties with true of purported multiethnic character. That is a significant step towards reaffirmation of the Bosnian magnetism that has been removed from the Bosniak national interests for the past ten years. By pushing Bosniaks to accept tripartite separatist logic [the SDA] legitimized the Serb-Croat hegemony and crippled the fundamental Bosniak national goal: centralized Bosnia, which is possible only with multiethnic authorities. In ten years hundreds of thousands of lives were lost. The multiethnic alliance cannot change anything in everything that was lost. It could only setup a long-term strategy for the revitalization of things Bosnian. But that will not happen as long as the SDP mixes things up: "consistent implementation of the Dayton Agreement as a whole" with "consistent and efficient implementation of the decision about the constituent character of all three nations everywhere in BH"; as long as they do not adopt decisive critical attitude with respect to suspicious international policy towards vitality of the Serb and Croat hegemony in BH, based on the results of genocide; as long as the Bosniak sacrifice is not institutionalized just like Holocaust, which, like "the Diary of Anne Frank" is a concern of every European... Even the agreed coalition of the SDP and the SzBH with Fikret Abdic's DNZ brings the necessity of open negotiations regarding the Bosniak civil war. Can the "alliance for changes" take (or bear) the burden of patriotic honesty, openness and intelligence? Slogans are one thing, and our deadly reality something completely different. Changes are impossible without opening of a front against our history of a sickness. Synthetic semblance of democracy would have no meaning nor significance, just as it has no meaning or significance in today's Serbia of General Draza [Mihajlovic, Serbian nationalist leader in WWII; his troops were responsible for crimes against Bosniaks in eastern Bosnia].

Translated on January 15, 2001