The Defensive Mentality of the Left

When the SDP said they would not join a coalition with nationalist parties after the October 7th elections, they preemptively closed the door not only to the SDA, HDZ, and SNSD, which are indeed leading but not the only ethno-nationalist parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but by rule, the SDP should have also distanced itself from the PDA, a-SDA, SBB, NiP..., as these parties are also fundamentally nationalistic, more or less open to European values and traditions, but in any case focused solely on ethnically pure voter bases and their territories. Therefore, it should be emphasized that the SDP's statement that they will not join a coalition with nationalist parties due to their own principles, yet would join a coalition with parties emerging from the SDA, is in a way a negation of those principles before any further discussion begins.

Anyone with a modicum of political literacy in Bosnia and Herzegovina knows that the left has no business with nationalists, and vice versa. Left and right ideologies were born out of opposition to each other. The right divides what the left unites. However, the concept of party and ideological values can be consistently implemented in Western democracies, but not in the Western Balkans, and certainly not in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where there is a political-mafia-great-nationalist assault on the country without any criteria or consideration. For example, Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) have different political paths in that country, but they certainly lead to the same goal – strengthening German society as a whole and for all its citizens. Dodik's SNSD and Čović's HDZ have the same paths that lead to the same goal – to dismantle Bosnian society along ethnic seams. The SDA may not have the same interest as the other two national policies in BiH, but it carries a different burden – a criminal impulse and incompetent personnel policy that stifles any hope in the country. Therefore, the entry of left-wing parties into a coalition with national parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the October elections should not have been interpreted as a coalition of right and left, but quite the opposite – a struggle of the left against the right, and on concrete points in the legislative and executive branches of government, where, therefore, it is the only place where political goals can be achieved democratically.

The Bosnian and Herzegovinian left has tied itself up, disqualified itself, and undermined its own arguments by refusing to engage in forming a new parliamentary majority in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Because, while bitterly calling for the preservation of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, they simultaneously retreat into opposition, making any potential repeated criticism about the SDA giving too much to Dodik and Čović during the redistribution of power, at best hypocritical, no matter how justified and true that criticism may be.

The left in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and primarily the SDP as the largest and most responsible party, should seek a chance to regain the trust of voters and the self-confidence of its members by moving away from a defensive mentality and towards genuine opposition, ready to uncompromisingly confront fascists, regardless of their own consequences. They have positive examples of such a struggle in neighboring Serbia, where, without delving into motives here, the opposition has nevertheless shown that it can overthrow dangerous regimes, from Milošević's genocidal policy, through Koštunica's and the regime of the Chetnik Tomislav Nikolić, to the dangerous dictator Aleksandar Vučić.

Power is taken away from those who do not deserve it, but it is also not given to those who flee from any responsibility, fearing for their own fate. It is a political charade through which a clumsy simulation of defending social and political dignity is carried out if the opposition only criticizes and does nothing concrete to remove that power.