Bosnian Abas on the Throne of Destruction: Konaković in Abdić's Style with Dodik and Čović Creates a New Reality for BiH!

By: Muamer Bandić, MP in the KS Assembly and member of the Presidency of the Party for BiH

Bosnian Mahmud Abas, popularly known as Elmedin Dino Konaković, can no longer hide his panic.

Empty talk no longer works with anyone, except for a handful of clientelists who are interested in his party. No one falls for the lie that someone else is to blame for everything anymore, because he and his partners hold all the levers of power in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They have no results, and the government can no longer hide behind the opposition.

If his destructive actions did not threaten the survival of our country, his propaganda lies would live on the social margins, like some cheap comedy. However, although without electoral legitimacy, he is the one who decides what will be done and how in this country in our name, so it is not time to laugh at his outbursts but to wake up and carefully monitor what he is agreeing to under the table with Milorad Dodik and Dragan Čović, so that we do not have a headache tomorrow when we wake up in some local version of Palestine or Chechnya.

Why do I compare him to Abas? Because they use the same matrix, and it is hard to find two more similar political figures in the world of politics. Humble and accommodating to the enemy, and extremely repressive and poisonous towards any opposition within his own people. Likewise, maximally cooperative in realizing the interests of others at the expense of his own people and country, and absolutely committed to preserving his own position of power and the personal interests of a narrow circle of genetically predetermined associates.

His arrival in the Council of Ministers of BiH has encouraged Belgrade and Zagreb to continue where they left off after the end of the aggression, now only through different hybrid means, for which our esteemed minister for forward somersaults provides space and regularly finds justifications for every act of vandalizing our state's sovereignty and pressing all those painful points of our people. Their attacks on our homeland have never been stronger or more open, and likewise, they have never had a more reliable local vassal.

How did this project, which realistically has nothing behind it but an empty shell built on lies, slander, and deception of anyone who stands in its destructive path, happen to us?

We fell for classic shell games and that Sarajevo street vendor's sale of bricks, just a little better packaged.

He sold us the story that he decided on an independent political project because of a fixed calf at JKP ZOI. That he was leaving the comfort and secure positions offered by SDA and entering the uncertainty of an independent political project in order to "fight" for justice and build an ideal social order.

On that crusade, he criminalized everything and everyone who dared not accept his insane ideas. All the time, he turns the spotlights on every action that is not in line with his standards, labeling it as terrible crime that must be dealt with, and offers himself as a messiah who will conduct all procedures publicly and transparently, and make the procedures ideal and just.

Thus, he presented his "fight" for a position as a special mission and the only alternative that could overthrow the then government, which he called a regime. He also promised 300 measures that would make Sarajevo a European metropolis.

Does anyone remember those 300 measures today? Has anything promised been realized, and has Sarajevo become a European metropolis under his leadership? Those of you who are not sure how to answer at first, go outside and walk around, at any time of day or night, and you will see that it was all a classic shell game. You will see that you are looking for the ball under the box of empty matchboxes, while the street performer laughs in your eyes.

The populist policy he pursues has as its only visible perspective the breakup of our state into enclaves and scattered local self-governments, and he sees himself as the leader of the Sarajevo self-government, which he has been ruling sovereignly since 2015.

He first started preparations as the head of the SDA Caucus in the Assembly of Sarajevo Canton (SKS), and he gained real power as the SDA cantonal prime minister, then as the NiP president of the SKS, and today as the president of one of the ruling parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of BiH. As we can see, the parties change, but one constant remains, and that is that the Bosnian Abas has been in power in Sarajevo for almost ten years, and our present is a direct product of his populist policies.

When you happen to ask him who is to blame for the situation in Sarajevo on any issue, political or communal, he will readily answer: the previous government! And he has been selling us the same brick for a decade.

And the fact is that behind this overly smart and overly honest purveyor of fog, only "scorched earth" remains. This was the case in KK “Bosna”, the former European champion, and it is also the case in Sarajevo Canton, where his camarilla is unable to ensure the rule of law or basic communal services for the citizens of a European capital according to the standards of the time we live in.

While he unreservedly slanders people who defend the little dignity and state we have left, he condescendingly calls for relaxation of relations and dialogue with undisguised haters and enemies of our state and people. The result of this Abdić-like action is that our society is deeply divided, poisoned by hatred, that we lack political strength, any clearly articulated political goals before us, and that today in Sarajevo, the word of Dragan Čović or Milorad Dodik is more valuable than, for example, Slaven Kovačević, Kemal Ademović, or Azra Zornić.

If we allow him to continue at this pace, soon it will not even be clear who should do what because we will live in a confused society of Orwellian inverted values in which every truth is relative, except that our Abas is always in power, but without accepting any responsibility for the consequences of his own destructive and dilettantish actions.

And we ordinary citizens are left to wonder, staring like Maho into a basin full of rainwater, in the middle of this Dayton temporary accommodation: Will the sun ever shine properly in this city? Because everything started dilettantishly, populistically unreal, and the end is looming, Abdić-like realistically.