Psychiatry squared: Three Petrovi and three entities

By Sead Omeragić

Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia seem to be destined for psychiatrists. Jovan Rašković turned the Serbs of Croatia into patients and turned them against Tuđman. When the agreements with Milošević began, Rašković suddenly died.

In BiH, the wartime ruler of life and death was psychiatrist Radovan Karadžić. He immediately began mass production of patients. True, he made them among the Serbs, but other peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina equally fell ill and died from him.

Karadžić was convicted of genocide and numerous crimes against humanity. It is important to say that he successfully lied publicly for more than four years. It even took many peace mediators several years to realize that he was a notorious liar. Then Božo Petrov, a psychiatrist, appeared.

He was born in Metković, graduated from the Franciscan Classical Gymnasium in Sinj and the Faculty of Medicine in Mostar. He became the first man of the Croatian Parliament. We first saw his need to sort things out in Herzegovina in Stolac when he, along with Miro Kovač, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, now head of the Foreign Policy Committee, arrived unexpectedly and without announcing a visit to another country. Both he and his companion Kovač came after Dragan Čović's claims that Stolac was a Croatian city. Petrov and Kovač then visited only Croats and expressed concern for their position.

Just as the world was once concerned about the camps of hunger and death into which Bosniaks from Stolac, as well as numerous Bosniak families and mothers with children, were crammed in 1993. Surprisingly, Petrov's visit was repeated, but this time to Sarajevo. Miro Kovač was with Petrov again.

Incidentally, Kovač began his career in 1995 in Franjo Tuđman's cabinet, in the Information Department. Exactly in the year when there wasn't a single Bosniak in Stolac, because they were all expelled by their Croat neighbors. The story was somewhat different in Sarajevo than recently in Stolac. A whole Bosnia and Herzegovina is the key to peace in the region, one could hear from Petrov. Croatia does not support any third entity, Petrov said.

Why did they send the same people from Croatia, after only a few months, with a completely different story? Is it because they expect to be believed in their sincerity the second time around?

Unfortunately, it all resembles Bosnia's old problems with psychiatrists. After that killer psychiatrist who lied before he even opened his mouth, now psychiatrist Petrov tried to lie publicly that he said Croatia does not support entities. Of course, he said that in front of many witnesses, claims Prime Minister Denis Zvizdić. Words carry weight.

They most often represent a person. They go before him and often express the character, even the honor of the person who utters them. Words carry these qualities or something completely opposite in people. Which Petrov should be believed? The one from October in Stolac, when he violated some diplomatic and human norms with his companion Kovač? The one from Sarajevo, when he said something like the Republic of Croatia's stance against entities? Or the one who ran to Mostar and denied all of it. At least two out of three Petrovi, to put it undiplomatically, are lying. Now we are confused. Are there three entities or three Petrovi? The positive development is that people here no longer believe psychiatrists. Even when there are three in one.