From Nijaz to Nermin, and Zlatko in between: How was social democracy killed in BiH?!

By Rasim Belko

14 years have passed since the departure of a man, a patriot, a professor, and a politician Nijaz Duraković. When people of his knowledge, vision, and caliber leave, it is usually said to be an irreplaceable loss. This description perfectly fits Nijaz Duraković, the last standard-bearer of social democracy at the head of the Social Democratic Party of BiH.

I had the good fortune to have him as a professor at the faculty; he was a patriot who, in a difficult time that heralded evil, 'harassed' the criminal and then powerful Slobodan Milošević. He did not back down, he did not compromise, and he was certainly not blind to believe that Milošević would change, just as his successors in the SDP naively believed that Milošević's political successor, Milorad Dodik, would change.

He was a member of the wartime Presidency of the Republic of BiH and again, unlike his successors in the SDP, he spoke with carefully chosen words about Alija Izetbegović, the first president of our country, because unlike the lost mediocrities who today lead the SDP as if it were an outpost of combined Croatian hegemonism and Ustašism, Duraković was aware of the times he lived in.

“I spent four difficult war years with my friend and long-time associate Alija Izetbegović. He was my president and I always respected him. I believe that in the history of the Bosniak people, at least for the last century, he is one of the greatest figures. I think his death is an irreplaceable loss for everyone in BiH. He was a great man, a true democrat, and a man who enabled what he always spoke of: freedom and democracy.” This is how Duraković spoke about Izetbegović, even though they differed greatly in many aspects. And today's SDP cadres accuse that same Izetbegović of everything imaginable, unaware that Izetbegović led the country to independence between two aggressions, while they cannot even clear 40 cm of snow from the streets and sidewalks.

At the same time, we who had the misfortune to live to see the times that Duraković predicted for the SDP and the misfortune of being led by such an SDP, can testify how much he, more than most, saw far ahead and knew what was coming.

And this is how Duraković spoke when he was leaving the helm of the SDP, which he had largely built himself: “I am submitting my irrevocable resignation from membership in the SDP, from membership in the Presidency of the SDP, and good luck to you, choose Lagumdžija, as you have orchestrated, and thereby you will bury the SDP in these regions.”

The SDP has survived as a political party, but it buried social democracy in its essential form long ago, back in the middle of the second decade of the new millennium. Not much time has passed between Duraković's announcement and the realization of what was announced.

And Zlatko Lagumdžija and politically faceless individuals painted red buried it, who are connected to social democracy only by their false calls of “comrades” and their red jerseys.

Because the SDP we have from Zlatko to Nermin has been anything but the party that the political visionary Nijaz Duraković built and envisioned. Instead of the true idea of the left, socially sensitive politics, and the civic idea that is at its core, the SDP today is more like a well-connected and organized criminal octopus.

From a political science perspective, the SDP under Zlatko Lagumdžija, to some extent, retained its leftist character, but as Lagumdžija's policies produced predators, tender enthusiasts incapable of understanding social democracy but capable of emptying the state coffers to the last drop, the SDP drifted towards right-wing populism.

Such social democracy set half of Bosnia and Herzegovina ablaze during the time of Lagumdžija at the head of the SDP and Nermin Nikšić at the head of the FBiH Government. However, the SDP has indeed changed since then. What Zlaja's gang did to the SDP is politically nonsensical. Only 10 months after he undermined the system of the Federation, whose government he led, and caused the burning of institutions, Nermin Nikšić was elected head of the SDP.

Today, it is a party without scent or taste. A party that essentially has no political idea of its own but adapts to the situation, filling election campaigns with populism, and its rule with clientelism, corruption, and organized crime, along with complete alienation from the person, the citizen, who should be the epicenter of their political thought.

The SDP only pretends to approach social democracy when it is in opposition, when it is easy to oppose from the hollow shell of social democracy and seek political points where this party should not be seeking them. And when it takes power, it becomes clear how hollow the shell of social democracy in the SDP is.

The year 2023 was the second realization of Duraković's prediction. In that year, Nermin Nikšić's SDP performed the final act in the suicide of the Social Democratic Party of BiH. It was the burial of a project that should have carried and realized the idea of a civic BiH.

In that year, the SDP renounced everything it was in order to grab a piece of power in which it will not be a ruler but a servant, a contractor for the Ustaša hegemonism that envisions half of Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of its great banovina.

Therefore, those who are still guided by social democratic thought and ideas, for the sake of honesty with themselves and the core to which they belong, should look at themselves and renounce Lagumdžija's and Nikšić's social democracy.

Their false social democracy has produced cadres who, in red jerseys, pretend to be social democrats, such as Denis Bećirović, Saša Magazinović, Elvedin Grabovica, Vojin Mijatović, down to petty political scoundrels like Elvedin Korora, Haris Selmanović, and others, who are being arrested these days.

Duraković is gone, and so are the few who sought a return to social democracy within the SDP. Some were taken by time, others were driven away. What remains is a political corpse that has infected Bosnia and Herzegovina so much over the past years that it will be difficult to heal all these wounds in the next 30.

And therefore, may the soul of the social democrat, politician, and professor, and above all, a man, Nijaz Duraković, rest in peace. And for us, for the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it remains to bury the corpse that presents itself as social democratic, which Duraković so visionarily announced to us back in 2002.