IDIOTS FROM OUR STREET How to most effectively destroy both the people and the state

By Sead Omeragić

---

I am writing this in the hope of warning about what no one is mentioning, but which will be key in defending against the corona monster. A member of my family died seven days ago and there was no one to bury him except me. Immediately after calling the Emergency Service in Sarajevo, a doctor with a mask arrived, a huge, patient, and kind young man who duly issued a so-called death certificate. Just one call and after an hour, people from the Islamic funeral society came for the body and took it to perform the religious rite before burial.

With the doctor's death certificate, I went to the funeral society of the Islamic Community and settled everything quickly and easily. Paid for everything in one place. Additionally, they directed me to Pokop to pay the annual grave rental fee. I paid it. And there they will give me another confirmation of the burial. I will go to the municipality later, where the deceased was registered.

But, they are asking me for proof of burial. I show them the doctor's certificate of death, I show them obituaries, I show them receipts that I paid the burial costs.

But that is not enough for them. They are asking for that additional proof of burial. "You can't get anything until the person is buried," the clerk tells me. And they are also asking for the CIPS for the deceased person. I give them a certified copy of the birth certificate, but they are asking for a more recent one. They tell me that a law was passed in 2013 stating that a birth certificate cannot be older than (I guess) six years. They send me to East Sarajevo for a new birth certificate, as the person was born in Republika Srpska. They give me seven or eight papers that I have to fill out and send me for new waiting periods.

Disappointed, I ask them what will happen if, God forbid, mass deaths start. I ask why the doctor's certificate of death is not enough? This means that tomorrow people who have to bury the dead, who were close to the sick and died from corona, will be exposed to the disease and perhaps to "nearby" death. Because our bureaucratic dinosaur with its many papers needs to be appeased.

After the funeral, late in the evening before sleep, I read: "Italian army trucks are carrying away the bodies of the deceased from Bergamo, one of the cities hardest hit by the corona monster, during the night. They are placing them in tents next to hospitals because the morgues are full. The vehicles will transport them to other regions because the crematoria in Lombardy cannot cope with the large number of deceased.

The family was not with the dying, there was no forgiveness. There will be no religious ceremony for this entirely Catholic environment. They will be cremated in crematoria.

Before the funeral, I bought about ten masks to give to the elderly. Exactly ten acquaintances came, and they all put on masks. Two imams were without masks while performing the religious rite.

Who will protect them tomorrow? How will people be protected from the coronavirus within the Islamic ritual? What awaits us? We are a bureaucratic state from top to bottom. We have crammed people into administration and invented hundreds of unnecessary papers where evidence and facts are duplicated. And with all these requests for certificates, evidence, and certifications, we have not burdened the huge administrative mastodon to work for us and make our lives easier.

No, no, our state, entity, canton, or municipality has shifted all this burden onto the backs of ordinary citizens. All of this is loaded onto us, to solve, confirm, certify, and prove. To wait in endless queues and expose ourselves to the risks of illness and death.

Meanwhile, our bureaucracy has simply put on masks, gloves, and today awaits us behind secure counters. And we, ordinary citizens, will be exposed to illness and death, all to satisfy our bureaucratic octopus that pretends to be a strict state. I once thought that bureaucracy created by nepotism, party affiliation, and clientelism would destroy the state.

After the coronavirus, it is clear to me: We have created an insatiable mastodon that will destroy our state and decimate our people.

Where are our commodity reserves for emergencies? This is an economic issue as much as two plus two is in mathematics. To have food reserves in a country where two billion worth of food is imported, mostly into the Federation. The war for large countries brought a struggle for territories, killed and expelled the Bosniak population from villages. When the survivors returned to their homes after the war, they started producing food because it opened up possibilities for additional income.

Many of those displaced found employment in state services and today sit with masks and gloves behind counters. Where agriculture still exists, granaries are full. Those who only have their homes in cities have shopping malls, carts, and a battle for flour.

There are no commodity reserves. They didn't even bother to have them. We who only have carts in shopping malls are exposed to the danger of coronavirus.

All pandemics have lasted a long time. The worst and longest, the Spanish flu, from December 1918 to January 1920. Only Asia and its disciplined citizens today offer hope that evil can be overcome in a short time.

What will happen to us? It hasn't even been ten days since we closed schools, and the appearance of sick people shows that this was during the period when the infection was already ongoing. We are a deeply and tragically corrupt state. As we said, corruption goes hand in hand with ignorance and spiritual poverty. God knows what awaits us in these terrible times. The coronavirus will, I am sure, bring a heavy revenge for our years of mocking the state and the terrible, irresponsible, and insane accumulation of bureaucracy.

It seems the time has come for us to pay the price. We will surely survive the virus. But the domestic party charlatans, political bluffers, and primitives, we certainly will not.