TWICE SHOT DOWN Konaković threatened, Schmidt lobbied, Krajina sent them home empty-handed!

By: Rasim Belko

Threats and blackmail, but in vain. After all, just like little else Elmedin Konaković has done in the past three years, he failed to take over the Una-Sana Canton in the second episode.

The people of Krajina resisted, once again, his threats made last week to halt projects for an already neglected part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I don't know how much they saw through him as a political propagandist who fails to deliver on promises, but I am sure that the people of Krajina were very aware, just like the people of Tuzla, that Konaković and his partners from the Trojka are most seriously investing our money from the FBiH level into the part of Herzegovina controlled by HDZ.

So his threat would not have been an exception or a novelty compared to the imposed FBiH government's treatment of Krajina; it's just that this neglect of this heroic part of the country was attempted to be capitalized on politically.

Besides blocking projects, Konaković also threatened to dismiss cadres from parties that still hold some positions at the FBiH level. But, after it became clear to him that the people of Krajina fear neither the sultan nor the vizier, he decided to use the “help of friends”.

And Christian Schmidt appeared in Krajina. He walked around Bihać, babbled nonsense, and when the cameras turned off, according to informed sources, he became the Trojka's voluntary negotiator for the change of government in USK. And then someone will say that Dodik and his associates exaggerate when they call him all sorts of names, but how else to call a manipulator who suspended the Constitution and the political rights of Bosniaks in favor of HDZ BiH and the Trojka project, then engaged in behind-the-scenes activities related to mineral exploitation in Kupres, then appeared as a third party before the Court in Strasbourg in the service of Greater Croatian politics, and who knows what else until this last case where he went as a vizier on behalf of the Trojka to overthrow the government in Krajina.

But he, and Konaković, were badly mistaken, because there they don't tie their horses where the aga tells them to, but they pack them all up and send them back to Sarajevo.

Now, the question for the PIC Steering Board would be how much damage Christian Schmidt can do by acting outside his mandate and whether there are any limits, given that questions about the funds he uses to finance private travels and tours of BiH and the world in the name of this country, for which no one authorized him, remain unanswered.

The third branch of the second episode of the attempted overthrow of the USK government leads to the SDP headquarters and the de facto helmsman of this ruined party, Vojin Mijatović. True, he does not appear in a direct role this time, perhaps having understood the message from May, when the people of Krajina put him in his place. But the media narrative that the USK government was “about to fall,” that it was “finished,” and spun that they had enough political strength to do it, clearly followed the influence of the SDP vice-president and FBiH government member Vojin Mijatović.

And that was in vain too.

The fourth branch of this story came from the bazaar of Cazin, from where old political saboteurs Rifet Hozanović and Nermin Ogrešević once again tried to take over Krajina. They rule Cazin, but it's too small a pond for their megalomaniacal ambitions and limited capacities.

That's probably why they agreed to be the “pawns on the deck” of the Trojka political bloc, raising their hands for the budget, Vukoja, and then voting against the rights of veterans… It's almost impossible to count how many times the People's European Party has changed its position in the last three years. They were among the 11, then part of the eight, and when they didn't get what they wanted, because Ramo & sons overtook them, they pretended to be patriots who, out of “principle,” wouldn't join the federal government and majority. And then, as soon as the Trojka promised them a piece of the federal pie and some pool in Cazin, they switched again and talked about doing it for patriotic reasons. As if one can be on two opposite sides for the same reasons.

However, the failed attempts to overthrow the government in USK in May, and now in September, will have serious consequences for NES as a whole, and especially for the duo leading it. Because, without power, it will be difficult for them to resolve everything they promised their party associates in depth, and nothing is certain for them in the Federation, because with or without them, the government in FBiH is not working, so it doesn't need a majority except for the budget. And they will solve that with some pool or sidewalk for Cazin.

If the information that there will be no change of government in USK is confirmed, which is very likely, the duo at the head of NES will be in serious trouble, and that party will slowly prepare for political twilight in the next elections.

Just as a significant part of the Trojka will go that way, because they have done little where they are in power, and the failures with violent and unprovoked attempts to overthrow the government in TK and USK, along with the bluff about an attempt in ZDK, have exposed them to the wider public as unserious political brokers, led by Konaković and Mijatović.

Brokers ready to blackmail the USK, recognized for its heroism and patriotism, just to get their hands on power.

In the end, this whole commotion around the Una-Sana Canton looks more like a test of endurance than a political process. The nerves of the people of Krajina have been tested, as well as the public's patience to watch the same actors repeat the same futile tricks. The outcome is always the same – a lot of smoke, no fire.

If anything, at least a useful lesson remains: the stronger the attempt at centralist imposition of will, the harder the resistance on the periphery. And perhaps that is the greatest defeat for Konaković, Schmidt, SDP, and NES, in the realization that Krajina is not a space for blackmail and experiments, but a mirror in which their powerlessness is best reflected.

Because, as I already wrote, the people of Krajina have long ceased to be obedient servants who tie their horses where the agas tell them to, but rather pack them up and send them back from where they came. And it is difficult for the Sarajevo Tricolors to understand this, because ever since Murphy-aga left, they have been wandering lost in their high ambitions and serious incompetence.