My Dragan, you didn't work, but you earned: The House of Representatives as an engine for impoverishing democracy and enriching the chosen few!

By: Rasim Belko

"I am especially proud that we have finally fulfilled a number of constitutional and legal obligations, some of which have been neglected for over a decade. We have appointed two judges to the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, then the Auditor General and his deputy, formed the Independent Board, as well as the Steering Board of Federal Television, thereby providing an institutional response in perhaps the deepest political and constitutional crisis since the Dayton Peace Agreement to date," said the head of the House of Representatives of the Parliament of the Federation of BiH, Dragan Mioković, today.

People! Are people living any better in Bosnia and Herzegovina than what Mioković's crucial work represents? No! And that is where any further need to explain the work of the House of Representatives of the PFBiH in the current year ends.

But let's go in order, which has long been absent in the political system of BiH. The only political legacy of Elmedin Konaković that we will see even when he leaves the scene is the freedom to call press conferences where the chronic illness of the system is forcibly presented as progress for the state and citizens.

This freedom that Konaković had gave Dragan Mioković and the team from the leadership of the House of Representatives of the FBiH the right to explain to us how they worked great, even though the state and citizens did not see any benefit.

What Mioković highlights can be defined by a simple sentence: "Everything we decided to condescendingly and politically unwisely give to Dragan Čović, we adopted. Everything that is of interest to the state and citizens, we have pushed aside. True, we also adopted the Southern Interconnection against Čović's interests, but we had to, Murphy forced us".

Mioković also highlighted non-working Sunday as one of the successes of the House he leads, forgetting to mention that even today, months later, fierce socio-political battles are being waged to correct the hastily adopted foolishness and bring it closer to some functional system.

Everything else was said so that there would be something to record and write down.

In the meantime, Mioković failed to mention that for their work in the period covered by the report, they earned about fifty thousand KM, which citizens of the Federation can only dream of if they play one of the lotteries in our country. Mioković did not deign to explain why there is no law that specifically addresses the improvement of living standards, which unblocks the progress of those areas of the Federation that are neglected because Čović is accommodated, i.e., the Federation works, Herzegovina is built.

Mioković did not want to spoil his own definition of success, so he avoided explaining to us on what democratic grounds the Rules of Procedure of the House were amended in such a way that whoever wants to sits in the debate, whoever doesn't comes, raises their hand, and goes home richer by several thousand KM. Because, that's what they've reduced the work of the House of Representatives to, with Rules of Procedure copied from some archaic house of Yugoslav parliaments and good cafes. Thus, the House of Representatives became an engine that impoverishes democracy, where the opposition can speak, and all decisions are made by representatives who spend the day in parliamentary and surrounding establishments. And that is the parliamentarism that the HDZ advocates in its essence, which we could also see in the association of the Croatian National Assembly!

However, Mioković also uttered a piece of nonsense, saying that "work and results must be observed in the context of the role that the opposition plays in parliamentary life." Not in Mozambique, nor anywhere else does the work of the authorities depend directly on the opposition; only in Bosnia and Herzegovina is idleness, coalition problems, and incompetence billed to a strong opposition. In a way – the opposition should be as subservient to the government as the current government in FBiH is subservient to Čović.

Mioković, supported by Mladen Bošković and Azra Okić, did not talk about the problems in the Trojka - HDZ coalition, due to which sessions are interrupted even before they begin.

In short, in the style of his coalition partner Konaković, he came to tell us what he considers important so that we would believe that it is so and that it is good.

In short, my Dragan, you have deluded yourself into thinking you have done something, that it is good, and you have taken a nice sum for such actions.

But hey, let's be fair to the man – it's not that Mioković lacks talent. Few people manage, in a country where chronic absurdity has been elevated to the level of political ideology, to say with a straight face that they have "fulfilled their obligations" without even a twitch of their eyelash while the last crumbs of credibility silently leave the room. In some normal country, such political recitals would be written by cabaret comedians; here, the leadership of the House of Representatives does it.

Of course, in this reporting cabaret, there was no mention of the fact that citizens of the Federation choose daily between food, medicine, and bills, while representatives simultaneously choose between hotel dinners and parliamentary daily allowances. No one touched upon the fact that out of the promised reforms, we only have reformed bank accounts of representatives, and everything else remains in the phase of "forming working groups" that do not meet because it is not known where everyone is having coffee that day.

And since we are mentioning cafes – yes, that is the real working unit of the House of Representatives. That's where agenda items are agreed upon, public companies are allocated, and sometimes, if they have time between two bottles, they write a press release so that the people know they are alive. It's not for nothing that old joke says that the only laws that regularly pass in our country are the law of gravity and the law of cafe agreements.

And while the opposition, the weak one that hasn't already switched to the side of securing jobs, fights for the minimal dignity of the institution, the leadership of the House, following the example of their political demigod Čović, is turning the institution into a monetized service for maintaining the status quo. Thus, the House of Representatives has become a kind of parliamentary betting shop – you invest four years of nodding your head and voting on command, and you leave with an asset declaration that even a Swiss banker would envy.

And to make matters worse – all this under the slogan of "institutional response in a political crisis." Because, by that principle, the guy from the crime news who robs a bank is also giving an institutional response to his own lack of money.

Therefore, my Dragan, don't tell us anymore what you have done. It is enough for us to know how much you have charged – that is the only reliable indicator of your political engagement. As for democracy, you can freely put it in a drawer next to the unread Development Strategy of the Federation. Anyway, neither of them is needed by anyone anymore.

And now, go ahead, order yourselves another one, at the expense of the people – after all, you, gentlemen, are the deserving bearers of the impoverishment of democracy in BiH. Since you haven't done anything, at least you've lived well from it.