Hadžikadić: Part of the crisis is also political Sarajevo, which benefits from the status quo

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - The president of the Platform for Progress, Mirsad Hadžikadić, reflected on the party's work and the future of BiH in his author's text. We are publishing the text in its entirety.

The European Union, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine, Kosovo, Platform for Progress... What connects us?

Seemingly, an incompatible whole woven from discontinuous subjects that do not form a sequence.

However, when we scratch beneath the surface, we share an identical essence.

And, by a twist of fate, destiny has also played its part, so besides the essence, heraldry also connects us, that combination of yellow and blue colors woven into the fabric of flags and coats of arms that symbolize all of the above.

In the vortex of civilizational movements, the struggle for power and influence, the 21st century world has once again found itself at a crossroads of challenges. Although historical trends point us towards the path of progress, understanding, cooperation, and a better life, there are retrograde forces that drag us into a dead end of hopelessness, hatred, division, and conflict.

The European Union, conceived as a political, security, and economic concept for integrating European nations into a single union based on the values of a free market and the highest achievements of democracy and freedoms, has found itself facing an existential challenge.  

Internal struggles for influence and power have fragmented the union into interest factions, making it dysfunctional. Brexit, the pandemic, the bipolarization between East and West, immigration, the dehomogenization of nations... are just some of the tests on which the Union is failing. And in such disorientation, backward factors have emerged, such as Viktor Orbán or Zoran Milanović, whose autocratic and chauvinistic styles strike at the foundations of democracy on which, declaratively, the European Union rests.

Ukraine, with which we begin the series of "yellow-blue" countries, has made a democratic leap and opted for a new political paradigm based on modern, pro-European values, distancing itself from a colonially subordinate status to Russia, which has provoked separatist tendencies in the eastern part of the country inhabited by ethnic Russians. Moscow's directives, as well as assistance in personnel and equipment to the rebels in Ukraine, have caused a large-scale war, which, if the international community continues to play the role of a passive observer, will only intensify and escalate into a conflict that will claim an increasing number of human lives.

Kosovo, with its independence, continued the series of breakups of former Yugoslavia, which, in the whirlwind of the fall of communism as a concept, was a response to the unitarist aspirations of Slobodan Milošević with the clear contours of Greater Serbian hegemony. Resistance to such aspirations manifested through the independence of the Yugoslav republics, and then the autonomous province of Kosovo, which caused the invasion and aggression of Slobodan Milošević's regime.

Although Milošević is a distant past, territorial appetites in Serbia clearly never subside. This is particularly evident through the rule of Aleksandar Vučić, whose doctrine is based on pretensions to Kosovo, and such aspirations are clearly being transferred to the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is facing the most intense political crisis since Dayton, which is manifested by separatism in the entity of Republika Srpska, which finds support in Belgrade, i.e., Moscow, and federalism and the aspiration of the southwestern part of the country to establish a new federal unit, which draws political support from Zagreb, and which further seeks partners in Brussels in its endeavor.

The third dimension of Bosnia and Herzegovina's crisis is political Sarajevo, which benefits from the status quo, from which it consumes political power under the guise of the imperative of political unity, behind which political and economic crime against its own people occurs.

The Platform for Progress completes the yellow-blue sequence, which was created as a response to the overall situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, consisting of free-thinking people, accomplished in various social fields, whose vision is a better and progressive Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which we jointly fight against ignorance, the use of the state and citizens for personal interests, corruption, crime, and nepotism. In which we do not see our differences as a problem, but rather as our value on which we build society. 

As such, with our appearance and innovative approach, we represent a problem for everyone, because we do not fit into the established patterns of political behavior.

However, a healthy idea cannot be destroyed. Because, if the goal is the betterment of the state and not personal interest, then there is no faltering and no giving up.

Essentially, all these are examples of the struggle of progress against the forces of the past that want to preserve the privileges they have gained at the expense of others.

 And in heraldry, yellow-blue colors, which symbolize all of us mentioned, have meanings of generosity and truth.

These are two values that cannot be destroyed. Our ideas are destined to win, despite all the onslaughts of retrograde forces. We face a common challenge of survival and the fight for justice, therefore we empathize with all our yellow-blue kin. 

At the end of 2021, we send a message of peace, which is the greatest civilizational value and has no alternative. Every individual has the responsibility to choose the right side and contribute to building peace and a better living environment. 

Finally, the lyrics of the good old "Parni valjak", which say:

My flags – are always the same colors

Love reigns over them

My flags – never at half-mast

Love does not surrender