General Chaos for Political Purposes

By E. Mušinović

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Foreign country donations, which are supposed to help Bosnia and Herzegovina cope with the consequences of the coronavirus (COVID-19), have shown the full weakness of the current state officials. Not even the situation where their work should be primarily focused on the well-being of all BiH citizens has deterred domestic officials from their insane need for cheap politicking and competition.

In times of general chaos, politicking has a much more serious diagnosis than what we are exposed to daily in the region – a diagnosis of severe political schizophrenia that not only Bosnian-Herzegovinian but also regional politicians are unable to suppress even during a crisis.

The decisions of domestic authorities show that, right from the start, decision-makers in Bosnia and Herzegovina understood that crises are, in a way, areas free from democracy and logic, meaning areas where there is no need for consent and consensus, nor for justifying their decisions to the public.

This very approach has led us to a situation where, at yesterday's session, the Government of Sarajevo Canton made a Decision on granting consent to the Agreement on awarding a transfer to the City of Novi Pazar (Republic of Serbia) in the amount of 50,000 KM. As emphasized by the Prime Minister of SC, Mario Nenadić, at this occasion, in a time when we are all fighting the pandemic caused by the coronavirus, "I believe it is our obligation to help the City of Novi Pazar, which is recognized in the Republic of Serbia as one of the hotspots of the coronavirus."

There would be nothing wrong with this approach if there were no other municipalities and cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country of which Sarajevo Canton is a part, that could also benefit from the additional financial assistance of 50,000 KM from the Government of Sarajevo Canton in the fight against coronavirus (COVID-19), just as it will help Novi Pazar. As unbelievable as it may sound, cities like Goražde in BiH are being helped by the Republic of Serbia. To summarize, poor Bosnia and Herzegovina is helping cities in Serbia, and poor Serbia is helping cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina – at the same time, poor countries, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, are seeking donations from foreign countries and international organizations to help their own local communities. 

The need to help a foreign country before one's own was also demonstrated at the end of March this year in Mostar when the cantonal government allocated more funds to Zagreb than to Konjic. The capital of neighboring Croatia received 100,000 KM from the pockets of BiH citizens due to devastating earthquakes, while the General Hospital in Konjic, which was appealing for medical equipment at the time, received only 84,875.00 KM.

Regarding donations from foreign countries and international organizations, the public in Bosnia and Herzegovina has never received an answer to the questions about to how many presidents and prime ministers and of which countries were requests for help to BiH sent, who sent those requests – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of BiH or the Presidency of BiH – and why international activity by state officials, within whose constitutional jurisdiction these issues fall, was generally absent.

This problem surfaced after the decision of Russia and Hungary to help only the Republika Srpska entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The logical conclusion would be that the representatives of the authorities in the Republika Srpska entity sought help and that foreign governments complied, just as the logical conclusion would be that BiH is not sufficiently engaged in seeking international aid. This is supported by the decision of the Hungarian authorities, which, after the official reaction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of BiH, decided to help the entire BiH, not just Republika Srpska.

Therefore, an official reaction is necessary because press releases in Bosnian, Croatian, or Serbian, intended for the local public, are merely a reflection of cheap politicking from which citizens derive no benefit.