Hyper-politicization in the service of impoverished elitism: How the budget jet-set is destroying our society!?

By: Muamer Bandić, delegate in the KS Assembly

Poverty is not just a mere absence of means for living, but also a state of mind and consciousness, or a way of thinking and acting that in itself creates poor resource management, the only likely ultimate consequence of which is material poverty. And almost invariably, the main characteristic of a poor society, run by upstarts, is the social hyper-politicization of every segment of it.

They say there is nothing worse and more dangerous than the poor who get burned quickly and easily. We can best see if this saying is true by the behavior and way of working of our current government. They seized power by trampling on everything and spitting on everyone who stood in their thorny ascent to the top of the power pyramid. Without any scruples, they fabricated lies and manipulated public opinion, violating all the values and principles they publicly "advocated". This became even more evident when they finally got their hands on the coveted positions and clearly showed everyone that this group of upstarts has absolutely no restraint in feeding their hungry eyes and egos.

Thus, today we have the Woman of the Year elected in Bosnia and Herzegovina, who is also the wife of a member of the Presidency of BiH, who is also the sponsor of the event that awards this "prestigious" award. This parapolitical cringe would probably have the informational value of a market barometer everywhere if these same characters, who today buy "prestigious" awards for their wives, had not built their political careers by daily spitting on the identical behavior of those who were before them. So, the play remained the same, only the actors changed, playing the same old, rehashed script.

It is a shame for all of us and a testament to our deep moral decay that the candidates for Woman of the Year were not the fearless mothers from Donja Jablanica and Buturović polje, who jumped into the torrent saving children, but awards are given to the wives of politicians whose only life achievement is posing in expensive fashion creations and smiling in front of cameras, while their husbands buy them "prestigious" awards with citizens' money.

Why am I mentioning this at all? Because the Trojka (The Three) has entered the second phase of destroying everything in front of them. They have taken over the institutions of the system from top to bottom and comfortably hold all levers of power. Where their cadres are incapable of doing their job, they have not replaced the cadres, but, in the manner of dictatorial regimes, they have adapted the institutions of banana republics to their incompetent individuals.

An example of this is the Assembly of Sarajevo Canton, where the Rules of Procedure have been literally massacred, just so that one person with modest intellectual capacities, with very pronounced manners of a violator of law, can conduct sessions as he pleases.

Thus, these false initiators of the fight for political freedoms and civil rights have turned the highest legislative body into a correctional facility for political sanctions.

The Speaker has been rewarded with the rank of guard commander with unlimited authority, to deprive and restrict the basic democratic rights and freedoms of political opponents, those who express disagreement with the regime that fulfilled his life wish to become an uniformed official, as if they were political prisoners.

Who cares that this has nothing to do with parliamentary democracy and European values, because it is much more important to spread rumors that some kind of revolution is happening in Sarajevo. Of course, they won't tell you that it is a revolution of blowing the budget and resources of the richest canton and a richer entity in BiH, just to fill the private pockets of existing multimillionaires and fulfill the dreams of today's newly created budget jet-set, and yesterday's poor.

The current events surrounding the University of Sarajevo and the Football Association of Sarajevo Canton show us that taking over political institutions is not the end of this exceptionally warm human story about the success of overly smart and overly honest people whom the "regime" did not allow to express themselves in our society. In other words, from these events, we see that taking over the institutions of the system does not satisfy the appetites of this hungry group of upstarts, and that they will not stop until they subordinate our entire social reality to themselves and their selfish interests.

And let me preface this by saying that I do not want to take on the role of an arbiter who will judge which interest group is right and which is wrong in either of these two cases, but with these examples, I want to emphasize the interference of government/politics in the affairs of the University and the Football Association, which is unacceptable for democratic societies, indicating an incredible process of hyper-politicization of our social everyday life carried out by the Trojka government. In doing so, the power held by political positions is used as a tool of influence to achieve personal interests and ambitions of individuals.

Only in this context can we understand the decisions of the KS Government and the KS Assembly, which deeply encroach on the competencies of the University of Sarajevo and are contrary to its Statute, and the very concept of independence and depoliticization of the university in a democratic society. Or the use of a minister's political position to regulate the work of civil society organizations, in this case the Football Association, whose work is regulated by the Statute of the association itself and is not related to the political system of the state.

In the first case, the Trojka favors the private interests of individuals from academic circles, who realize their interests through assembly delegates, and the Trojka repays their debts for help and support in overthrowing the previous government, completely neglecting the interests of students. And in the second case, the minister uses his political position to benefit himself in the election to the management bodies of the same association over which he exercises institutional, legal supervision.

Each of us can find plenty of objections to the work of both mentioned organizations, but it is not in line with democratic traditions for us politicians, and especially not as elected and appointed officials, to interfere in the work of organizations that, by all rules, must remain beyond the reach of political games. From the aforementioned examples, we see that after the institutions of the political system, institutions of social importance such as the University or of sports importance such as the Football Association, and even banal public events like the Woman of the Year election, have come under their purview.

Observing these events, we can rightly say that this is a hyper-politicization of the entire social reality, which conceptually places us in the group of banana republics ruled by dictatorships, as something like this is only possible in totalitarian societies. With that process, the newly created budget jet-set is also moving us far from European societies in terms of values. And that is the only revolution currently taking place in Sarajevo Canton.

At the same time, the government speaks sweetly about European integration publicly and loudly, while in practice they behave like excellent students of the party school of Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un. Such a practice will have only one likely result, and that is that these upstarts will completely destroy our society and destroy our ability to cope with the challenges of the future in an emerging globalized, turbulent world order.