Nikšić: I am not afraid to enter the fight for a fairer BiH when I have 30,472 SDP members behind me

At the 6th Congress of the SDP, President Nermin Nikšić addressed the gathering, today also formalizing his mandate won in the internal party elections on September 20. In his speech, he said that the strength of the SDP lies in its membership of 30,472, who are proof that the SDP is moving forward, much stronger than a year ago, reports the Bosnian news agency Patria.

- We have become a bastion of democracy and created conditions for the recovery of the SDP. All of us are a guarantee that BiH will be a country of equal, successful citizens and a country where there will be room for everyone. It is very important that we continue with reforms. The opinions of every member must be heard. Only in this way can we preserve our unity. It was not easy to preserve it in the past nine months, but we succeeded. In the SDP, there is room for everyone who wants a strong SDP and a strong BiH.

We are very often asked what the left wing in BiH is today.

It is that political force, movement, party, belief, idea, ideal that all of us SDP members strive for. That means that the state of BiH is a state of all its citizens, regardless of nation, origin, religion and social status. I will never agree with the thesis that we have betrayed the ideal in any way. We are not the ones who divided BiH, divided citizens on any basis, introduced segregation in education and divided our children. We are not the ones who economically destroyed the working class through predatory privatization and the general theft of public goods.

We want a successful country, we want happy and satisfied people and a secure future for our children. We want a future without divisions, wars, destruction, crime, corruption, unemployment, poverty and hopelessness. That is what we want and that is what we will fight for.

We are not the ones who created the coordination mechanism according to which cantons were turned into states, which at any moment can halt progress towards the EU, thus de facto giving us a third entity.

The SDP will not remain silent, the SDP will always work to ensure that our state gets its Supreme Court so that all its citizens enjoy legal equality and legal security, no matter where in BiH they are located.

BiH is weak today because the political left in BiH is weak. And we are responsible for that because we allowed the left to enter the last elections disunited and opposed, so today we have what we have on the scene.

That is why we need unity of the left in BiH. I believe that there is a general consensus on this issue within the SDP, but also among other parties whose work is based on the ideals of social democracy. I will do everything so that these parties never again enter any elections mutually opposed. I believe that the strength of the left lies in young and new people who will bring fresh ideas, but in implementing those ideas they will be helped by our members who possess political experience.

The left and the SDP must be a bulwark defending the principles established by ZAVNOBiH and the anti-fascist movement of all peoples and citizens of BiH. We must continue to advocate that our country rests on these principles because that is the true BiH.

We in the SDP must break down the fears on which divisive politics survive. I will do that as president, and the SDP will be a party that, through its unity and representation across the entire territory of BiH, will show that in fact only such a BiH is possible. I am not afraid to be the first to enter that fight because I know that now I have 30,472 brave people behind me, members of our party, ready to fight for a better, fairer and happier BiH.