SDA on unfamiliar territory: Decades of cultural and educational failures

SDA is a political party that has been in power since 1990. After the war, progress was expected in every field, a better life for people, and job growth. But everything that happened resembled a snail's pace towards a better future.

With SDA at the helm, the Bosniak people have lost battles on all fronts. Catastrophic privatization, total economic collapse, and the largest army of unemployed in Europe. Ever-increasing debts. The ruin of education, from primary to university level. A lack of cultural strategy for more than three decades after the war. Decline on all fronts, from the judiciary to the personnel collapse of the executive government in numerous sectors.

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This is the second part of a series analyzing the destructive rule of the national party of Bosniaks, published by the BH news agency Patria.

We have no cultural policy and cultural strategy, nor have we had one, precisely due to the casual attitude of SDA and its generally incompetent cadres. A catastrophic situation prevails in culture and education precisely because of the intellectual impotence and lack of spirituality within SDA.

Dozens of absurdities and multi-year failures have marked the party's actions in this area.

In preschool age, children practically learn nothing about the genocide against Bosniaks in Srebrenica, nor about the crimes that occurred about twenty years ago. Textbooks are mostly written by SDA party cadres, so it's no surprise that there are no chapters on the genocide in Srebrenica.

SDA could be called the Party of Least Resistance, as it follows those lines. Completely wrong processes in primary education with a total, seemingly unbearable burden on both children and parents. Children have been given a ninth grade and recently a final exam to pass. It is completely unclear why generations who experienced school as joy are now not allowed to have their childhood?

Textbooks are changed every two years, and the alleged authors do not write a single sentence without inversions. This most clearly shows that the supposed authors are actually ordinary copyists of textbooks from Serbia, Croatia, or even Montenegro. Secondly, the most severe consequence concerns the inability of children to learn the presented material normally and naturally. It seems that with constant copying inversions and acrobatic copying, everything has been brought to an absurd level. There are huge logical gaps in these schizophrenic sentences, so it's no wonder that children have difficulty or cannot accept lessons from such textbooks at all. What is clear to everyone is not clear to the creators of cultural and educational policy from SDA, so the agony repeats endlessly for more than two decades.

The fight for the Bosnian language should first take place in areas with a Bosniak majority. Lessons in Bosnian are served to these children as if it were about spaceship technology, not about the language with which these poor children were born.

Standards of Bosnian are not applied on public services. Everything that is read is read with incorrect accents. For years, the Croatian language has prevailed on these services, so for a long time now, there has been no equal treatment of the Bosnian language. After all, television services are also declining, as SDA, like all significant segments, does not recognize statehood.

Publishing does not exist. For a long time, there has been no mention of budget support and assistance for publishing, which was once distributed in crumbs but meant some hope. Neighboring countries Serbia and Croatia have thirty times more publishing than BiH. So, for every book published in BiH, there are about thirty publications in Serbia and Croatia. The situation with translation is equally tragic. One of the most important tasks in culture is completely neglected and almost humiliated. SDA only needs translation for their meetings with foreigners.

Seven cultural institutions have been almost extinguished precisely during the rule of SDA and its cadres: Museums, the National Library, the Federal Archive, and the Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina have survived and continue to work thanks to the enthusiasm of individuals.

There is not a single feature film about the recent war past that has been made, nor has there been funding from the budget. Namely, in cantons where SDA ruled unchallenged, funds could have been secured to make a feature film. However, the BiH film industry has produced a large number of outstanding works, mostly with foreign producers. Therefore, directors who have brought fame to BiH have received nothing significant from this country.

Cultural policy so far has only had individual characteristics of ministers in the cantons. Namely, it is an open secret that money from cantonal budgets has mostly moved to neighboring countries.

Documentaries about the war are mostly the work of conscientious and diligent individuals. The state in this, more precisely SDA, seemed to have no desire to participate publicly in any way.

That line of not offending is visible at every step. If we look at sports, for which we don't even have a ministry at the cantonal, entity, or state level, we see the same situation. SDA is a party that never plays on someone else's field. The funds allocated are meager, and the results we have are almost exclusively from athletes who are "working and living abroad." With the exception of Bosnian combat sports: judo, karate, taekwondo, and boxing.