The Left Without Reactions, Workers Without a Fight for Their Rights

Nationalists in Bosnia and Herzegovina have mystified the left to such an extent that they are being compared to the harshest totalitarian regimes. According to them, social democracy is the same as communism. And surely, such a hateful regime should no longer be on the minds of modern, European, free people. It shouldn't even be dreamt of. Some things are not pleasant to mention.

Can the distorted image of social democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina be blamed solely on the nationalist rabble, which, under the guise of protecting the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, has plundered the state and individuals, destroyed factories, carried out criminal privatizations, and is now attacking each other?

The left is fundamentally a struggle for workers' rights, a struggle for social justice, for the equality of all citizens, for a state of security and individual rights. On one side are dangerous nationalists and crude capitalists, and on the completely opposite side should be social democrats.

Bosnia and Herzegovina needs the civic more than ever, as opposed to the nationalist. We need justice for all, not for the chosen few.  

For two decades, the country has not been in clearer ethnic divisions and a more difficult economic situation. Citizens yearn for hope and justice, while national parties offer them fear and uncertainty. Anonymous surveys and public gatherings of citizens also speak of this. At the beginning of the year, SABNOR gathered perhaps the largest number of anti-fascists in Mostar in the last 20 years. This confirms that the idea of social democracy, which is essentially based on anti-fascism, has not died out. On the contrary, it is more alive than ever. Therefore, there is no doubt that citizens want change; the only question is how much the left in Bosnia and Herzegovina can offer them.

The question is where to find the strength for change.

At least four parties declare themselves as left-oriented, and at least two as civic, and this is only in the Federation of BiH.

How is it then possible that May Day in BiH passed with noise over Zisko's selfie spit in Ferhadija, and not with mass gatherings of workers?

We talk about half a million unemployed people in the country. What could and should the left have done about the cosmic injustice that has befallen more than half a million people in this country? And it is not only the unemployed who are in existential distress. Injustice is at the doorstep of the employed, who are largely in a state of servitude before the new brutal capitalists.

World media have reported on workers' protests in one of the most social countries in Europe, great Germany, where even the most ordinary worker has decent living conditions. Or about clashes of demonstrators in socially sensitive France, where much is subordinated to the ordinary worker.

Where, then, does the left in Bosnia and Herzegovina get the right to comfort, so that during one of the biggest economic and political crises in the country, it does not organize workers and take to the streets with them in protest marches for this May Day? Can the Bosnian-Herzegovinian left save the country from the deadly embrace of the right by sitting in armchairs and writing proclamations?

The left should ask itself why Bosnia and Herzegovina is a combination of social injustice and paradoxical social peace? Who is to blame?