Corruption and crime celebrate another year of the Troika: SDP BiH, NiP, and Our Party in a challenge of who will break more laws!

By: Rasim Belko

Do you remember Eric Larson, Senior Advisor for Anti-Corruption at the Office for Combating Corruption and Quality Management of Sarajevo Canton. He came to Sarajevo in mid-2020 and suddenly disappeared sometime in early autumn two years later. Removed, hidden, withdrawn, whatever, but this Eliot Ness established an “anti-corruption system” that helped the US Embassy in Sarajevo strengthen the Troika’s government in KS and prepare for positioning along the vertical from state institutions downwards.

To show the readiness of the Bosnian-American version of Eliot Ness to deal with crime, the Dar 1 operation was staged, which resulted in spectacular arrests of police officers. But does anyone know today how that major operation to fight corruption in police ranks ended? Of course not, because the epilogue was a bad court process, with few pieces of evidence – typical American prosecution, and more or less one-year prison sentences. In that case, hiding evidence of suitable cadres was a story in itself.

The Office for Combating Corruption came to life, the links between the Troika strengthened, the American administration was there to help, and the witch hunt could begin. Criminal proceedings against those who ruled before were announced then and in the years that followed, there was talk of millions and billions, nepotism, and what not.

Lost between desires and possibilities, the leader of Narod i Pravda, Elmedin Konaković, then mounted his broom and announced that he would clean Sarajevo of the scourge called SDA cadres. Nermin Nikšić and Edin Forto, leaders of SDP BiH and Our Party, tirelessly followed him.

And then, from the broom and anti-corruption spin, they landed in power in the Federation by overthrowing the Constitution of that entity, thus becoming accomplices in the most serious criminal offense with Christian Schmidt and Michael Murphy. Larson was no longer there, he evaporated under suspicious circumstances, but his protégés, with open eyes, sat in the laps of two politicians with the biggest mortgages of unproven crime.

The fight against corruption turned into a fight against the state!

Because, the story of corruption and the persecution of the bad guys on our political scene remained only as a propaganda tool for the Troika’s vanguards and cadres to cover up all the bad things they have done, from complicity in violating the Constitution of the FBiH, organized dismantling of BiH with Milorad Dodik and Dragan Čović, to organized cultivation of crime and corruption within their own ranks.

Today, their patrons are being arrested, yesterday ministers, before that mayors, directors, party cronies. In the country they have brought to the brink of war and division, hopelessness has become a daily occurrence, and almost every sound of a police siren meant a new scandal with Troika cadres.

Budgets are empty, plundered, projects and contracts are under lock and key marked secret, and citizens are impoverished and confused. Today, in the area ruled by the Troika, only dealers and those who work well, bankers, and the diaspora can buy apartments. Because six years ago, specifically in 2019, when the Troika began its rule, the average price of an apartment in the four Sarajevo city municipalities ranged between 1,700 and 2,500 KM. Today, in the same area, the price of an apartment costs from 3,100 KM to 4,000 KM and more.

And then the wartime camp commander, now RTRs propagandist Gvozden Šarac, wonders why Bosniaks from Sarajevo are increasingly buying apartments in Lukavica. He is right in only one thing, it is a strategy, but not the one Šarac thinks of, but a strategy of bad management as performed by the Troika.

Day has dawned, period. Only outside is a dangerous darkness in which serious criminal processes are taking place. I don’t have an exact figure, but I can roughly say that more Troika cadres have been arrested in the last two years than SDA cadres in the decade before.

Some of these affairs have also attracted the attention of the world public, such as the one about the super cartel and the founding of NiP. The Prime Minister of the FBiH and leader of the SDP, Nermin Nikšić, although not yet linked by the judiciary, is directly connected to the 'Spengavanje' affair, for which cadres from the Government and police of the FBiH were arrested. At the cantonal level, it is difficult to keep track of everything; there are few months in which cadres from NiP, SDP, or Our Party have not been arrested.

The most dangerous thing of all is that the collapse of institutions is being normalized. Violating the Constitution, political violence against procedures, and open subservience to foreign centers of power are presented as higher politics. In such an environment, corruption is no longer a deviation but a rule, and crime is no longer an incident but a system. When justice is dispensed selectively, and responsibility is measured by a party membership card, then the state ceases to be a common framework and becomes prey.

Therefore, a simple question is being asked today – who will be held accountable and when? Not for rhetoric, not for spins, but for concrete decisions that have brought the country to a state of institutional paralysis and social depression.

Because without true accountability, there are no reforms, no justice, no future. Everything else is just an extension of a poorly directed play in which the fight against corruption has ended with the VICTORY OF CORRUPTION!