Pre-election campaign: Investments in dreams and (im)pending announcements

Bosnia and Herzegovina has been flooded with media stories about investments, donations, and highway construction in the last month.

More than a year ago, it was announced that Saudi Arabia had approved a donation of 10 million dollars for a scientific institute within SSST University, owned by Prof. Dr. Ejup Ganić. A full year later, the donation was finally formalized with a contract. Like many things, this donation left a serious question behind: Why did it take a year for a pompous signature on a document? And all this just 15 days before the elections?

The race for promises of pre-election investments continued with the signing of an agreement between the Government of Sarajevo Canton and the State Investment Fund from Dubai. The agreement is 'framework' and allegedly means multi-million investments in BiH. So, there are no concrete programs, but there is a 'framework' agreement, just 20 days before the elections.    

After all this, a fresh announcement of huge investments of one billion euros from Azerbaijan emerged. This announcement also arrived half a month before the elections. Incidentally, Azerbaijan has already provided loans to Serbia and Montenegro by employing its own construction crews to repay their money through highway construction.   

"Next year, BiH will become the biggest construction site in the region," SDA leader Bakir Izetbegović told us before these local elections, who, before the General Elections in 2014, announced the employment of 100,000 unemployed people. He interrupted the doubts every now and then, expanding these investment projects to one term, then two terms, and finally to 10 years. Ultimately, the Bosniak leader has not yet opened a single factory, but he persistently talks about increasing employment. Now he is also promising us the biggest construction site in the region.

There were no investments or contracts in BiH until the start of the one-month campaign for the local elections. Bosnia and Herzegovina has not had any investment cycles so far, unlike other normal countries. The only investment cycle in the history of this country is being announced this September, before the elections. One has to wonder: If there is any background to these investment announcements, why are they all squeezed into this one month of the election campaign? Why did even those donations for Srebrenica and for a private university wait for this month of the campaign? Donors have unknowingly participated in this pre-election campaign, just like some funds with their 'framework' agreements.          

An ordinary person might believe them if, three or four days ago, the IMF loan tranche hadn't arrived, with which the world bought another period of peace and social survival in Bosnia and Herzegovina. When the spending of this loan begins, they will tell us fairy tales about GDP growth. Of course, without real development and economic prosperity.  

An ordinary person might believe them if they hadn't just sold another golden goose for 20 percent less than its value – Fabrika duhana Sarajevo. Before that, they told us it was about a major investor, British American Tobacco (BAT), and then it turned out to be a mysterious private individual from Vienna. The most tragic part was when the state owner, in the person of the Prime Minister of the Federation, Fadil Novalić, announced the wrong buyer. The buyer is not important, the announcement is. And we have heard enough announcements. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, there is only talk. Like never before these days, we have pre-election, hunting, and investment stories.