The King is a mockery

“My lord, the land called Bosnia is an unfortunate land not worth conquering, even less holding, but it can be tolerated as friendly. It would not bother us then, and it would at least serve as a safe stopover. It is not a kingdom in our sense. The king is a mockery of a semi-wild barony. The lords fear each other. The common folk fanatically hate both the king and the barons. From four sides, aspirants already known to You are interfering, provoking, attacking, and seizing. This is a land of tears, slaughter, and horror. And the faces of this world are calm, conversation is slow, and the past is spoken of with pride, and the future with hope. Miracles!
Men are some mixture of Slavs, Illyrians, Celts, and Romans. At home, they do not return swords to their scabbards – for watering troughs, for pastures, for a hostile glance, for an ugly word. At European tournaments, they amaze with their health, strength, elegance, and warrior skills. In their own homes – through negligence, laziness, vanity, and dirt. They are mostly Patarenes. A dedicated stratum lives ascetically and atones for the others who enjoy pagan comfort.
Their women are tall, taciturn, and heavy, without charm. I must admit, however, that there is something attractive in their stony dignity. They can be queens and servants. They bring benefit and peace to the court they enter, but – there is no cheerfulness. May the Lord have mercy on this land. Until it finds itself, we have nothing significant to seek in it,” wrote DS about some imagined time, whom we, like many others (such as ĆS, IS, DS) drowned in the “sea of the unsaid” about which the unsaid ŽG, drowned in a sea of books in his Zenica, writes.

Once, according to DS, spies thought and wrote about Bosnia and Bosnians as at the beginning of the text. If the writer's words are only slightly modernized, it seems that nothing resembles the time he writes about, and yet, it seems that not much has changed since the time he writes about, except that today there is no longer a need for spies or writing... on one hand, everything is so public here that there is no need for any spies, and on the other hand, what is secret – is so secret that even those who do it have no idea what they are doing. Of what has been written about the imagined time, there is a little of everything, some in hints, and the rest, unfortunately, in the facts that the lords are still lords, the land is still unfortunate, the barony is still semi-wild, the people are unenlightened, and the kings... our kings are still a mockery.

Currently, the scenario of pre-election madness of the people is unfolding, which manifests in several forms, the most obvious of which is the generation of crises by raising difficult and unsolvable issues at critical moments, knowing that they will not be solved, nor can they be solved, at that moment; the meaningless and unnecessary inundation with numbers and letters about collected direct and indirect taxes and other levies as if they were picked up from the street or fell from the sky, not from our pockets; about reaching billions in foreign trade, unimaginable to the common man, as if anyone will ever see any benefit, with micro and macroeconomic indicators mostly in percentages that mean less than nothing in real life; about economic growth in a country that not only lacks an economy but the number of hunger strikers is slowly equaling the number of those who are starving although they are not striking... 

From mouse holes emerge those we haven't seen since the last elections and agreed-upon lessons are being taught to fellow mice, cats, and dogs... Those we have seen more often than we wanted are currently in the phase of devising and realizing their own martyrdom, and on the political stage, those from whom we expected to be at least moral and human verticals, if not political ones, have appeared in ungrateful supporting roles. In sports terms: balls are being thrown, intentional fouls are being committed in the opponent's penalty area, and the game is intentionally kept around the midfield, consciously not entering the opponent's space because it is currently politically more profitable to concede a goal than to score one.

There is no doubt that all the events that have taken place in Bosnia and Herzegovina and abroad – concerning it – in the past month, culminating in the recommendation of Johannes Hahn, Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, in his new report on countries wishing to become members of the European Union, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, which stated that “BiH must implement reforms”, and that “the EU believes it supports BiH in its steps towards the EU”. What this “support” means is not difficult to conclude: first of all, it is about holding the wounded person until they expire.

Indeed, there is little chance that a government will be formed, let alone function, by the next elections. It will be the longest period of (un)certainty, although by no means a precedent (it is more a confirmation of the rule and the conclusion that a government elected by this national electoral principle can never bring any improvement to the country, let alone the state. Of course, such an outcome – if this is an outcome at all – could have been predicted as early as October 9th, immediately after the official announcement of the election results. 

While the right tightens its boots, threatening with everything, the numb left awkwardly prolongs its celebration for managing to gather itself enough to elect a new – old president, not knowing what to do next: continue sitting on its left hand until it numbs further and continue as before, on someone else's, or change hands?
All of this seems as transparent as it is unconvincing, barren, and – vice versa – certainly unsuccessful, at least as much as all previous unsuccessful attempts to close Bosniak ranks or, at best, what is called “pro-Bosnian forces” from the renewal of the lawsuit against FR Yugoslavia to the review of constitutionality or the request to abolish the term “Republika Srpska” have exuded. The reason is more than simple: an old horse cannot be taught to saddle, or, we all know that you can't make a pie from what you don't have, and even if you do, it certainly won't be edible, no matter how beautiful it looks. And this “pie” doesn't even look beautiful. In other words, behind each of the founders of the would-be Bosniak left (with hints of multi-ethnicism) there are more individual and collective failures than anti-fascism in the mayor of Sarajevo. 

All of this, individually and collectively, serves to “beautify a corpse” or create the impression that something has moved, when in reality, the status quo is being maintained at all costs.

The other day, a director explained the essence of a multi-party or multi-factional system to me: it is – in essence – the possibility of being in multiple parties/factions at the same time. Practically, as a loyal cadre (of all parties), it doesn't matter to you which one is in power because you will get a piece of the pie anyway. By the same logic, if this is the “rule of law”? then Bosnia and Herzegovina is a state of law par excellence! Namely, you cannot even accuse, let alone convict, any lawyer, no matter what criminal offense they commit. 

A few weeks ago, Ukrainian comedian Volodymyr Zelensky declared victory in the presidential elections held in this Eastern European country. As the BBC reported at the time, it was a convincing victory over his opponent and the current president, Petro Poroshenko, and more than convincing: as many as 73 percent of voters in the second round gave their vote to the comedian. An interesting fact that marked the Ukrainian elections, in which the comedian won overwhelmingly, is that even before the elections, he violated his country's election law by showing journalists the contents of his ballot paper while voting. The police came to his campaign headquarters and issued him a fine, but Zelensky did not care much. The Ukrainian president has significant jurisdiction in Ukraine, primarily over the country's security, defense, and foreign policy.

There are almost no grounds on which this society is not divided, split, fragmented beyond recognition and insignificance. However, ultimately, Bosnian-Herzegovinian society is deeply divided into public and secret; the public is loud, arrogant, insolent, and inconsiderate, convinced of its power because it has money, positions, functions... The public is organized and hierarchically structured, it has leaders and soldiers, those who appoint and dismiss... it is a submissive structure easy to buy and ready to sell, control, and incite... to kill, steal, cheat, lie, and ensure that none of it is held accountable, hidden behind vital national interests. That army has its visible and invisible wing: the visible one, which threatens and intimidates, beats and disperses, and the invisible one, nurtured, anonymous commentators of news on portals and instigators of savage lynching actions on social networks. The former are in the country, and the latter mostly are not... from distant safe havens and social benefits, they bark and curse, help and advise... anything to keep us away... let them be there, and we here.

On the other hand, or rather, below (because the former are above, on the surface) lies the secret: quiet, withdrawn, convinced that it is powerless and that – since they cannot even outvote the public – they can do nothing to change and replace; it is caring, self-effacing, and disorganized to such an extent that two people who know each other do not know a third. The secret has an educational or at least a formative flaw: they have been raised or at least taught that (although it doesn't like it) it fears the public and respects it and by no means questions it. The secret does not have its public domain; it has a few spokespersons exposed to the comments and lynching of the public's secret domain.
The public does not like virtuous people; they remind them too much of what they are not... and they eagerly await someone from the virtuous to do anything based on which they can be tarnished, slandered, and “brought down to earth” with the malicious “they were never any good anyway”.

Both the public and the secret have one common characteristic: fear... with the difference that the public fears secretly, quietly, only for itself and so that no one sees, and the secret fears publicly, loudly, openly, with deafening whispers...

People here no longer live in fear, with fear... but from fear... they feed on it, they drink it, they get sick from it, and they die from it.

I know that what I am saying is inappropriate, unsuitable, uncomfortable, unpleasant, and ugly, but three unfortunate but large and significant events: two unsolved murders and one espionage affair, are possibly the key that opens the Bosnian-Herzegovinian can. All three require and necessarily need a completely independent and professional judiciary, and none will ever be resolved without the cooperation of judicial institutions at all levels. In addition, there are several other unresolved cases, from the assassination and murder of the Minister of Internal Affairs Jozo Leutar to (paradoxically, above all) the murder of two police officers, cases that require inter-entity cooperation... and that is where the Bosnian-Herzegovinian story actually begins. The entanglement of the story began with killing...

If not like that, then... If it were up to me – which, thank God, it is not – or if I happened to be king, even of Bosnia and Herzegovina, I would, as some of the first royal decrees, legalize euthanasia, abortion, witch hunts, introduce the inquisition, and declare the death of social democracy. I would hesitate a little about legalizing soft drugs – but I would put marijuana oil on the zero list of essential medicines available to everyone at affordable prices because, as someone said, we are not going to admit that we have endured all this for decades with a completely clear conscience. I would declare a moratorium on stupidity and idiocy, and I would punish every third outburst by publicly dousing the offenders with tar and feathers, and then escort them from Slatko ćoše to the Presidency of BiH, in front of which, on the newest sidewalk, they would have to loudly recite their asset declarations and for whose sake (who persuaded them) they are doing foolish things. Then they would have to kneel on corn until dawn. I would ban all political, economic, and other analysts, and those who, at all costs, want to engage in this and be known for it, would have to start their television appearances by crowing or clucking. 

When the (king) is a mockery, and the barony is semi-wild... let it at least be funny.