European Appearance, Balkan Essence: Our Party in the Claws of Corruption and Personal Conflicts!

By Rasim Belko @rasimbelko

Naša stranka (Our Party), which for years presented itself as a bastion of social-liberal values, is today facing its gravest moral defeat – the arrest of minister Bojan Bošnjak and several scandals involving Our Party cadres, alongside political posturing between Serbian-Croatian interests.

For a party that established itself on a narrative of moral superiority, this is a blow that exposes, one might say destroys, decades of carefully crafted political marketing of “fingers always out of the honey jar”.

From Friday, November 15, 2024, Our Party will no longer be able, nor can it, play the role of a sophisticated European movement whose portfolio always features polished spokespersons who can superiorly explain how things can be done, and do not hesitate to show it.

In translation, they know how, but it's wrong or illegal. Besides Bošnjak, Our Party will be credited with a much greater contribution to the disaster in Sarajevo Canton than its partners in the Trojka project. This is because the party has held the position of prime minister and several key positions in the government for the past six years.

“Našizam” between Ideals and Reality

In fact, perhaps the Trojka project, of which Our Party is the political differentiator, had to happen in order to brutally shatter the illusions that Bosnia is Switzerland, where charlatans, disguised through outdated technologies and political products, sell fog and rule, polished into the eternity of opposition.

And Our Party has for years played the role of a “political widow” – always with the complaint that it is a victim of an imperfect system, while easily entering into all possible political games. They criticized the system but did not hesitate to become an integral part of it when it suited them. They offered moral lessons to everyone, from SDA to the opposition bloc of which they are a key axis, while quietly enjoying privileges and building networks of power that are now crumbling under the weight of corruption allegations.

When Our Party promoted "purebred" social-liberalism on the political scene, it promised a different approach, transparency, meritocracy, a fight for the marginalized, and a society of equal opportunities. However, over time, this idealism turned into a mere cliché, and the party into a mechanism for preserving its own political power. Instead of fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised, we witnessed the incredibly easy grounding of “Našizam” (Our Party-ism) into the murky Bosnian-Balkan fields for hunting.

Our Party has not only betrayed its voters but also the very idea that politics can be a tool for change, not just a bargain for private interests. And it seems that bargains and private interests have largely ruined the image of Sarajevo's political Europeans. Because, “Našizam” in BiH is not only collapsing due to the arrest of Bojan Bošnjak, who is accused of being part of a criminal organization for the destruction of Bjelašnica and drinking water in Sarajevo.

Remember the story of Boris Trapara, remember their statements in the Parliament of the Federation, look at what the president and state minister of transport Edin Forto is doing. In addition to all this, Our Party as a political organization has experienced an autocratic conflict within itself.

Internal Conflicts and Political Abyss

Edin Forto, the shadow president, Sabina Ćudić, the increasingly likely shadow president, and Srđan Mandić, as the only mayor from Our Party, are in a serious conflict, which flared up after Forto dissolved the only municipal board of NS that elected a mayor. And all internal turmoil is caused by greed and interests, which clearly outlines the real picture according to which Our Party cannot even preserve the semblance of its long-built image of European sophistication.

In fact, I will dare to say that Our Party, by its very nature, could only survive as an opposition megaphone that speaks but doesn't know how to do or fix anything. The experiment of the international community, in which they, as the axis of the Trojka project, were supposed to manage the system, has led the “Našisti” (Our Party members) to the edge of an abyss from which there is no return. Because, when they are in power, there is no more talk about SDA's bad policies, about nationalists, about some corrupt ministers and prime ministers. Or there is, but it falls into the shadow when SIPA inspectors knock on the doors of their cadres.

Now they are in power, and they clearly demonstrate to us that they are only good at selling fog, and that the only thing separating them from corruption, political and other scandals was the fact that they were not in power.

Without a doubt, top spinners will try to relativize this scandal, shifting responsibility to individuals, the system, or political opponents. However, this moment requires fundamental introspection.

It is also time for the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, primarily Sarajevo, to stop being uncritical buyers of fog in jars and to demand accountability from those who promised them a meritocratic, European, social-liberal approach, and delivered internal Serbian-Croatian hegemony, corruption, and nepotism.

There is less and less room for naivety – our society does not need political widows (know-it-alls) who eternally play the victim of an imperfect system in which they perfectly hunt. And that's what Our Party was. It was, will it be again? It's up to us.

And Schmidt's term has also passed…