Lavić: Unite pro-Bosnian forces, Komšić was elected by citizens, not Bosniaks

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - Senadin Lavić, a professor at the Faculty of Political Science in Sarajevo, called on all pro-Bosnian parties to create and agree on an official document on behavior and strategy within the current negotiations on constitutional and Election Law amendments.

Interestingly, Lavić stated that in this situation, the only true orientation is DF of Željko Komšić, who was not elected by Bosniaks but by the citizens of BiH, and that this needs to be constantly emphasized.

- I believe that all of this in BiH is an organized crisis that is being systematically produced by domestic political forces and their foreign, lobbying centers that help them achieve their envisioned goals - Lavić emphasized in the program Otvoreni studio on Federal Radio.

“An attempt is being made to realize war goals, and all this pressure on Sarajevo is because Sarajevo is perceived as the weakest point, as it was in the nineties, and it still is today, and then everyone points the finger at Sarajevo to satisfy the demands of Dodik and Čović. And the reason why Sarajevo has been perceived as the weakest point for thirty years is constant yielding, there is no continuous pro-Bosnian policy, and if you don't have that, then you have some ethnic-religious nuances that you sell as policy. Either we don't know or we don't have the capacity to establish a legal and political order. This seems attractive and like an easy game to those lobbying groups, including Palmer. And they come here only to achieve the goals of the strongest, like Dodik, and the actual goal is to create a third territory that would be covered by HDZ BiH,” added Lavić.

KOMŠIĆ WAS ELECTED BY THE CITIZENS OF BIH, EVERYTHING ELSE IS A DECEPTION

He added that the blockades of federal and state authorities and institutions were made only to accommodate the demands of Čović and Dodik.

"If we agree to Dragan Čović's Election Law, we will have a 'third entity', very soon we will have a 'union' of BiH, and then in five, ten, fifteen years we will have a legal dissolution of what we call the state of BiH. What I emphasize, currently in this situation, the only true orientation is Željko Komšić's Democratic Front. Other parties function as party groups and mostly represent a specific party interest. I mean SDA, SDP, Naša stranka, and NiP, etc. I don't want to read their programs, programs are one thing, I follow political practice. I haven't heard from these parties that they have clearly expressed a Bosnian-Herzegovinian political program. Naša stranka is for now a party of one municipality, a small concept, for example. If you don't have the capacity and if you haven't devised a broad BH platform with people from the party, then I don't know what we want next?" Today there are Bosnian-Herzegovinian and anti-Bosnian-Herzegovinian forces, and that's how it should be called in public discourse,” specified Lavić.

“One thing I also want to mention, which concerns the insinuations that Željko Komšić was elected by the votes of Bosniaks, and we know that in elections, it is not nations that vote, but citizens. Out of approximately 550,000 Croats in BiH who have the right to vote, about 150,000 voted for Dragan Čović. So, Dragan Čović was defeated by the Croatian people, and that should be acknowledged and repeated. No one can know that Bosniaks elected Željko Komšić. Željko Komšić was elected by the citizens of BiH. Everything else is a deception. Božo Ljubić emphasizes that the only politics that can exist here is national or popular. So, the politics of Bosniaks, the politics of Serbs, and the politics of Croats. The key thing we need to do as a counter-argument is that politics cannot be national and that one nation cannot lead politics, but that politics must be state-oriented, that is, Bosnian-Herzegovinian. What I would suggest to the parties from Sarajevo is the following:

“They must create and frame a unified Bosnian-Herzegovinian program that will be neither Bosniak, nor Serb, nor Croat, but a program of this state, which will be the bottom line below which we do not go. If we continue to work this way, with ethnopolitics dictating the relations in this country, we will very quickly come to some kind of conflict. I recommend to the people who, as they say, represent Bosnian policy to create a clear document with which we will go to Washington, Berlin, London, Paris, and Vienna when needed, and show that there are forces here that want something different from what is being attempted to be imposed on them. Politics cannot be conducted by three people sitting down and saying we don't want this and that. Politics is conducted by putting a certain program on paper and incorporating 500,000 votes into that program. So, gather SDA, SDP, NiP, Naša stranka, etc., etc., add up your votes, create a program, and do business with that program,” he explained.

He added that he fears that in the current group calling itself pro-Bosnian in negotiations, there is great irresponsibility and misunderstanding of the historical moment we are in.

“I don't see any document, any political initiative, or any political framework for where all this will lead. Actions are taken ad hoc here, reacting to certain demands from Palmer, Sattler, or this and that. I think that the foreign negotiators involved in these processes went in this direction for purely pragmatic reasons, to quickly and effectively solve the problem, so they tried to do it through separate individual meetings. SDP had the chance to be part of the system of government, and the question is why they didn't do it two years ago? Take your share of power and do what is yours. DF, for example, entered such a system, and it is precisely known what it does. You don't have to be with SDA, but you have to be in the system of government. It has been shown that entering government and fighting for BiH is not a bad policy at all. That partnership between DF and SDA should now be expanded and the personal animosity between party leaders should finally be ended,” concluded Lavić.