Aličić: Elections in Mostar will be a key moment that will determine the direction of development of the city on the Neretva

(Patria) - Fadil Aličić, candidate for the City Council of Mostar, and also vice-president of the Municipal Committee of DF Mostar, speaks to Patria about numerous topics concerning elections, electoral policy, and events in the city on the Neretva.

"From hundreds of billboards in Mostar, new and old faces are smiling at us these days, who, with less or more inspiration, promise what has already been promised in every previous election. Although citizens no longer believe these municipal promises, they somehow still align themselves with "their own", whatever that might mean. Although citizens are generally dissatisfied, they always choose someone who has been in power for years. Perhaps that's the catch? Dissatisfied people are the easiest to manipulate. Victims of the right-wing system and privatization turn to the right.

The same ones who celebrated the 29th [of November, a former Yugoslav holiday], and then pretended... that they didn't, have been generating problems in our city for years. The problems are always the same. The solutions, which are offered, are also always the same and ineffective. The university underground with patriotically conscious high school graduates has been terrorizing mediocrity for decades, and offers no hope to our youth... The only thing on offer is institutionalized hopelessness," says Aličić.

There is a lot of work to be done in Mostar, what will you focus on if citizens give you their trust?

- If citizens give me their trust, my engagement in the City Council will focus on a transparent approach to citizens' money. This primarily means clarifying suspicious city projects such as unfinished collectors, dubious roundabouts, favoritism towards construction and "solar" tycoons, the illegal construction of the Croatian National Theatre, which, in addition to dubious approvals, has also been "expanded" onto an adjacent plot, with the persistent turning of a blind eye by the competent inspection.

Can you clarify the story about the Croatian National Theatre, what is actually happening there? How did a non-existent and unauthorized entity dispose of someone else's, i.e., city construction land, for the benefit of HNK Mostar?

- How was the land for the construction of the building allocated to the Croatian National Theatre by the imaginary Croatian Municipality of Mostar, through a partnership agreement concluded in 1996, i.e., six months after the abolition of that municipality? Only the City is responsible for urban planning, not any city municipalities, which, incidentally, were abolished before they even issued that permit. This kind of political and legal violence must be stopped. I will advocate for the re-examination of this obviously suspicious documentation and for the accountability of those responsible for this arbitrary rule. I am not against the theatre, I am not against Mevlana, but I am against demarcating territory. Mostar is my city, Mostar is not half a city. The Boulevard is not a border. Neither the HNK project nor the Mevlana project should be spite projects aimed at marking national territory and wartime demarcation lines. There is no place for such moves in a multi-ethnic city, because there should only be a place for common and multi-ethnic projects.

We are actually witnessing how the last pieces of Mostar's greenery, gardens, are being bought by former waiters, forklift drivers, excavators, and local community presidents who have become rich overnight. They do not feel the crisis. They have renewable sources.

You come from a party that pays great attention to the Election Law, as well as to everything Christian Schmidt has done, it is somehow impossible to avoid this burning issue even though it is about local elections?

Legal regulations and relations at higher levels of government inevitably affect the local level as well.

The essence of the moral decay in politics is, however, in the amendments to the Election Law imposed by Schmidt, according to which the Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina will never again be able to be formed without HDZ. HDZ will forever be able to decide who their coalition partner will be from the "Bosniak" side. They will be able to blackmail and choose. After the next general elections, it will no longer matter who wins the most votes.
The future Government of the FBiH could again be in an endless "technical mandate". That's what this is about. So why not deliver everything HDZ asks for? HDZ will keep their seats for them indefinitely.



That's why they are partners "who keep their word". And that's why, even before these local elections, they had to be offered a hand, to register lists even where it logically shouldn't have been, in order to split the voter base of HDZ's competition. Regardless of the fact that the Trojka itself is at a loss here and is deceiving its own voter base. That is a price worth paying, regardless of the stench of inhumanity. That is precisely why the notorious amateur in the role of the richest minister in the world stated that we will see him until 2026, and much longer... Anyway, they had to think about future political survival... They are not concerned with birth rates, but with immunity. A tripper combination. We in DF do not deal with such things. We are trying to bring back at least a minimum of morality and dignity to local politics.

However, the constitutional framework of this country, as well as the Mostar Statute, are tailored to ethnopolitics. The legal framework for elections more than obviously leads voters in this country to ethnic preferences. The heroes of transition usually win. The others are always somehow close, but close is not enough.

Lackeys of political "elites", mini party dictators, some of whom want to dismantle state institutions, and if possible, the state itself, others want to maximally exploit these institutions and that state, and a third group wants to save that state, which is why they unite with the first and second???"

Not a word about a person as an individual and a citizen, and all judgments of the European Court are based precisely on that individual. That is precisely why he will eternally rest in peace. Because they deal with the rights of the citizen, not the rights of the collective.

Schmidt has secured Čović the exclusive right to choose collectives and decide on them. What more does he need? About citizens tomorrow. Tomorrow is when they have the most work anyway.

My goal is to fight against that. A person as an individual is particularly important at the local level. The first word in my dictionary is neighbor. Now other dictionaries have prevailed. It is the citizen who should articulate city policy, not be a victim of city tax collectors. No, not to have the city impose new obligations on him every day, to charge him for parking in front of his own building, to promise him collectors and sewage in the 21st century, to not know where to take his garbage, and to be accountable to no one for his incompetence.

Accounts are settled once every four years, in local elections, but that is clearly not enough. I will advocate for all malversations to be publicly exposed, and for manipulators to be sanctioned.

How have citizens voted so far, can there be a change?

Expecting change from the same people who have been ruling for 30 years is insane. Expectation is the mother of disappointment!

Before every election, including these local ones, the authorities finance citizens with their own money, providing fictitious support to various categories, from students, veterans, and pensioners to socially vulnerable voters. Pensioners are paid what they have "earned" in amounts sufficient to cover utilities. So, the state gives them just enough to return it to the state through paying taxes. Citizens show their gratitude for this in every election. And this pouring from an empty vessel into a full one, from the left pocket into the right, has clearly been working perfectly for years. It's important that they are "ours". This doesn't have much to do with the local level, but the election matrix is the same. That's why I appeal

To both those who will vote and those who will be outvoted. We are a nation that has no idea what GDP is, but we perfectly know whether secular institutions should be decorated with religious symbols, whether streets should bear this or that name, whether something should be demolished or built, whether to leave here or not. Such things are simply decided in elections.

All citizens know very well who stands for what, and who has given, sold, betrayed, destroyed, and devalued what. That's how they should vote. This is our city, and above all, the city of those who never returned from the fight for freedom, and whose monuments are now being desecrated in a synchronized manner by the very creators of these divisive policies.

One thing is certain: the elections in Mostar will be a key moment that will determine the direction of development of the city on the Neretva.