WHEN A FOREIGNER DECIDES YOUR FATE Diplomacy on the vaulting horse, politics in a bingo coalition, human rights with Dodik, and Bosnia and Bosniaks on the auction block

By: Rasim Belko

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Historic. That is the epithet most often heard around the General Elections of 2022. And they were. Under the patronage of the international community, Schmidt's decision was imposed, but also a plan for the future political mosaic in Bosnia and Herzegovina was created. 

Today, we have the final contours of this historic election of the people and citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and few are satisfied. Especially among those who made the elections historic with their votes. Fewer and fewer are satisfied among the political factors, who naively think that now that the SDA is gone, there will be enough room for all the crocodiles in the pond to get their prey. 

American students and players have taken over Bosnia and Herzegovina, or are on the verge of doing so. But there is no sign of American democratic rules; they are closer to African rules. American students, although they have been on the scene for a decade or more, have become the vanguards of change and the engine of new political forces. Their grouping received a reward in the form of a colorful pre-New Year's lie known as candidate status for EU membership. 

As happy as the American students were about it, they were too good-natured with too little wisdom, first handing over institutions in the smaller entity and at the state level to Milorad Dodik. A partner for a new era. And this partner created the Serb Republic of BiH on January 9, 1992, and has been on Karadžić's path of dividing BiH ever since. The other partner is the "bearer of European values," who once managed camps, and today wants to camp in the Presidency of BiH, and even after Schmidt's segregational decisions, he seeks an additional package. To make segregation complete. 

They did not win in Sarajevo, but through grouping on American maps, those who wholeheartedly take Bosniak votes have become powerful, but they are not ashamed of Bosniak identity, because Bosniaks are not. And that's not a problem. Neither am I; I am a Bosnian. But I did not take the position of a Bosniak outside the constitutional rules for the Council of Ministers of BiH and force partners to hand over Bosniaks to the goodwill of Milorad Dodik. And when the fate of Bosniaks depends on Dodik and others, it ends as all those in the white fields of tombstones in Potočari, Prijedor, Foča, Sarajevo... ended up.

I know these people who are still counting will tell you that we shouldn't talk about the past, that we need to build a new story about the future, a gentle and tolerant narrative. But they are already proven political idiots, solely eager for positions and the realization of interests, which is why Dodik, and soon Čović, will lead them on a wild goose chase. 

And so, in the new narrative, traffic in the Council of Ministers of BiH will be managed by economist Edin Forto from the "others" category. The Trojka, Osmorka, or Šestorka will say that Bosniaks will have three ministers as the Constitution dictates, but this is just a poke in the eye to Bosniaks and a mockery of common sense. 

Human rights, thanks to the projected policy of the Sarajevo Trojka, will be managed by Milorad Dodik's cadre, formally from the Green Party and even more formally a Bosniak, Sevlid Hurtić. And everything will be legitimate and legal until crucial decisions are made. And those will concern state property and energy projects of the separatist at the head of SNSD. And then Bosniak Hurtić will show the rest, Forto and Bosniaks Elmedin Konaković and Nermin Nikšić, what a job they have done. Everything will be according to the Constitution and rules, but nothing will be the same. It will be the final end of the most serious post-war deception of Bosniaks in the projects of the Movement for the State and Osmorka. And it will be a rather painful way for Bosniaks who voted for the new policies of old swindlers to understand. The October 2022 elections will turn out to be historic. Probably fateful. 

And I am not sure if Bosniaks, those who want this country as it was chosen on March 1, 1992, will have the opportunity through political steps to correct the evil deed of an internationally created fraud in the person and actions of Osmorka, Šestorka, Trojka, or the Movement for the State. 

Because the message "we will remove the SDA" was actually, and now obviously, a mask for removing Bosniaks. I cannot say they deserved it, but that the alarms for waking up are now louder, that is probably clear. 

And they should have been more awake earlier, because ever since it appeared, Naša stranka has pursued a policy of completely cornering Bosniaks. And NIP, which squandered the funds of Sarajevo Canton across BiH and abroad, has done nothing different to Bosniaks. All to slightly improve the result, and its president Elmedin Konaković finally grab state heights. And now Bosniaks will have a head of diplomacy who learned about proper stretching and vaulting horse exercises, and will know about diplomacy only what his handlers from the international community tell him. It is certain that Bosniaks will experience a repeat of Zlatko Lagumdžija, only in a much more illiterate version. 

They will also experience a repeat of Nermin Nikšić, whose mandate last time the citizens of the Federation, mostly Bosniaks, marked by burning institutions, because they were pushed to the brink. 

How this will end this time, I don't know, but the wrong path that Bosniaks, and to a large extent Bosnians, have taken is of a serious nature. The rope of salvation is getting shorter and thinner. 

"Do not agree to the appointment of those cadres who have already proven their anti-state actions," recently wrote academician Esad Duraković on these pages. However, those who had to read his words did not read them.

They didn't know or didn't want to, it's all the same. They have done their job, Dodik and Čović will do the rest, they know both what they want and how to do it!