Political acrobatics: Criminals cleansed the territory, and peacemakers like Čović will endorse the results

Dragan Čović's interview for TV1 is full of contradictions, illogicalities, and unsustainable political acrobatics. Unfortunately, Čović did not sound tolerant and argumentative in any of his answers, as he has at least tried to present himself so far. He started shockingly:

- We have the reality of Republika Srpska, whatever anyone thinks about it. You and I can talk privately about how we see RS, but it is the reality of a project.

With this statement, Čović has absolved the horrific ethnic cleansing of Croats and Bosniaks from the territory of Republika Srpska, "whatever he might say about it privately." He publicly supported the genocidal policy of the Serbian political, military, and police leadership convicted at the Hague Tribunal.

There are practically no Croats left in RS today, as if they were never there. Čović views RS as "the reality of a project." In that case, he should have been asked: What does he think about the final verdicts of the Hague Tribunal and the International Court of Justice against the entire political, military, and police leadership of Republika Srpska? He could have at least diplomatically avoided such an answer in which he absolved the crime against his own people.

Čović speaks about the census in BiH in the same way he speaks about RS, as a cover-up for ethnic cleansing and the final "concentration of people." Just like the political, military, and police leadership of RS, Čović's friends in The Hague, "Prlić and others," were also convicted in the first instance for a parallel project. General of the Croatian Army and HVO Slobodan Praljak called this project "Lebensraum" (the Nazis' struggle for living space by expanding eastward) in front of the disgusted American journalist Roy Gutman. Čović has already visited this group of creators of Herceg-Bosna in the Tribunal's prison in The Hague, perhaps trying to influence the second-instance decisions of an international court.

Čović continues to talk about the census in BiH:

- We got a very clear picture of BiH. I suggest to all those who are following this, to make a map based on the census. Let them forget about any internal borders, just to see what the concentration of people is now. We have completely ethnically cleansed 85 percent of BiH. The whole of RS, the largest part of FBiH, equally so. We should not deny it, but by respecting each other, accept that this is the reality on the ground and how to preserve the unity of BiH, and we must preserve it.

So, the criminals cleansed the territory, and peacemakers like Čović will endorse the results.

The absurdity is complete: "We need to respect each other" by "accepting the state of extermination of some peoples on the ground."

"BiH is already divided," he says, "we have two entities, within one entity 10 cantons. So what is the problem if instead of these 11, 12 governments, we have three, four, or five? It doesn't matter how many, as long as they are all multi-ethnic. You cannot create an ethnically pure structure as such." Just a few sentences earlier, he concluded that BiH is 85 percent ethnically pure.

In the interview, Čović admitted that his cadres in majority-populated cantons have political control over the police structure.

- We recently had an exercise - Serbia and RS and police forces on the Drina. Someone interpreted it one way or another. Probably unnecessarily, but it happened. Now we in FBiH want to respond with a similar exercise or a similar rapid response in Tuzla. That is pointless – said Čović.

The exercise "Rapid Response 2016" today did not involve four cantons, three of which are predominantly Croatian, which is a clear message. He tries to justify the exercise of the MUPs of Serbia and RS, i.e., one part of BiH and another country, and then treats a legal exercise of police forces as a provocation, which is a complete malicious substitution of theses.

So, Čović is not contradictory just like that. Someone who was the secretary of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Livnica Sokolac. Someone who was special among Croats because he signed in Cyrillic. Someone who, upon the remark of a Sokol worker that they shouldn't repair planes that "bomb ours," said: "We don't know who ours are yet." Finally, a person who knew about all the camps in Herzegovina and looked for prisoners, about which there is written evidence, for forced labor in his factory.

No matter how much we know about Čović's past, he continues to confuse with his inarticulate positions. He concludes that with this completely legal police exercise, the Federal Police is "settling scores in this way" with the exercise near Šepak. Čović again falls into contradictions: "We are protecting BiH as a whole, and those who are trying to endanger that integrity, let's try to find ways, negotiate with them how to get out of these problems, instead of creating new ones."

"We must therefore show goodwill and negotiate with those who "are trying to endanger the integrity of BiH." Čović blames the legalists, while illegal and anti-constitutional behavior deserves negotiations, goodwill, and tolerance.

- I am afraid that this was also someone's strategy - to put pressure on certain areas in BiH, people leave, etc.

The mass departures from BiH of all three constituent peoples look terrible. But, as in all other combinations, the three political elites will absolve themselves by blaming the other two.

"Then local elections come and you hear that there will be no local elections in Mostar." It is inexplicable that Čović "heard" that there would be no local elections in Mostar.

Čović's policy is losing because Croats, like the other two peoples, had far more rights in the civic Republic of BiH according to ZAVNOBIH than they have been granted by a crazy national policy of clean territories, as propagated by Boban and Prlić's HDZ.

This policy, which Čović is now propagating, is reducing the Croatian corpus to western Herzegovina, which is a tragedy for an indigenous people, immensely rich in culture and tradition, which is by its very being a part of multi-ethnic BiH.

The only thing that should not be doubted is that all the policies of the Balkan national producers of chaos and despair will one day come under scrutiny.