Who falls on the sidewalk, will betray the state: Leaders of SDA, SBiH and DF must answer if the state is more important than local interests?!

By: Rasim Belko @rasimbelko

Can Sarajevo politics that calls itself patriotic or pro-state finally understand that neither such politics nor citizens, and especially not the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, will benefit from formally proclaimed ideas in the long run.

Before the October Local Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we witnessed the announcement of a political agreement in Sarajevo called the “Sarajevo Response” to the bad situation we were led into by the current government led by the Trojka project (SDP, NiP, NS).

That Sarajevo response was created by SDA, the Party for BiH, and the Democratic Front, and it largely functioned, although the public could sporadically witness that even during the pre-election period, there were personal interests and animosities that were shaking the foundations of that agreement.

However, the initial agreement itself was the turbine that drove the winds of change. And that could somehow be felt in the atmosphere, because the public, faced with the bad political image of the current ones, had the opportunity to choose a broader political story of some new local, and potentially state, authorities.

And that is why the leaders and cadres of the parties that entered into the “Sarajevo Response” before the elections must understand that good results in the capital are not solely their merit, but precisely the consequence of an improved atmosphere in which the public hoped that an agreement could begin to build a house.

What we have been witnessing in recent days and weeks is a return to some old practices. And the root of the problem is not in what leaders often present to us as a “local story,” but in the fact that at the local level, the effect of interest structures that are already planning deals for the mandate period is much greater.

We have witnessed for too long that at the level of each local community where two or more interest structures clash, a political agreement for the common good seems impossible. And that brings us to the question that the leaders of the “Sarajevo Response” parties must ask themselves and answer: Can this society be built on stable foundations and be prosperous if every agreement for the common good is undermined by tender-mongers and tender-enthusiasts?

Because, it seems that is the biggest problem in politics that calls itself pro-Bosnian. Similar examples have occurred before, and the latest is the case of the Novi Grad Municipal Council. Although in that story, we should not forget the Hadžići Municipal Council either, where two of the three “Sarajevo Response” parties also diverged.

It is clear that the leaders, primarily SDA’s Bakir Izetbegović, but also Semir Efendić as the head of the Party for BiH, must not only seek but must find solutions due to the potential that the “Sarajevo Response” story carries for the state.

They must, if they are serious in their announcements and their desire to build a political bloc in the General Elections in 2026 and in the atmosphere created in September 2024, a bloc that will have the strength to direct the state onto the right track through power along the vertical.

For this to happen, petty particular interests must be controlled or reduced to a minimum, just as potential mistakes and traitors within one’s own ranks are minimized in the defense of the state. Party leaders and the teams advising them should finally understand that every sharp divergence on what we call the local level has been an additional bullet in the state-building tissue.

And it’s not that we haven’t witnessed this from Mostar, Bihać, Srebrenica to Sarajevo.

Otherwise, every individual story about the patriotic policies and intentions of the mentioned parties will be overshadowed by political immaturity and the inability to understand that the state is also where the issue of the sewage system is being resolved, as well as where diplomacy is involved.

The hegemonies of neighbors, the complete dullness and corrosion of the international community’s ideological solutions, and the artificial political bloc created in international circles that turned out to be bad for Bosnia and Herzegovina oblige the leaders of the “Sarajevo Response,” Izetbegović, Efendić, and Željko Komšić, to look a little beyond local and daily political topics.

Positions in the councils of Hadžići, Novi Grad, or some other municipality, or the interests of those who call themselves local power brokers of certain parties, must not supersede the issue of the state. Or at least they shouldn’t, because if we have a dilemma in our answer on this issue, then everything they say about the state is under suspicion.