Terzić for NAP: Games on the political scene in BiH are pre-election proving to one's national corpus

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a hostage to the interests of those we call political leaders – warns journalist and political analyst Almir Terzić for the Patria news agency.

- After the failure of the April package of amendments to the BiH Constitution, there is less and less talk about the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and more and more about party, group and individual interests. Until the failure of the April package, we could talk about building the state of BiH; since then, it has been constantly under attack from disintegration processes – says Terzić. 

Political relations in BiH have become further complicated in the last few weeks. 

The BiH authorities submitted the EU membership application to Brussels at the beginning of the year. One of the conditions for this application to be credible is, among other things, the establishment of a Coordination Mechanism. The Coordination Mechanism represents a contact point in BiH with which Brussels will discuss once concrete negotiations on BiH's EU accession begin. 

Analysts have warned that the Coordination Mechanism is unnecessary and creates a parallel system in BiH. Because BiH as a state already has the Presidency, Parliament and Council of Ministers, which can and should represent the country in international relations.

President of HDZ BiH Dragan Čović and member of the BiH Presidency first advocated through the media for the adoption of the Coordination Mechanism and a faster path for BiH towards the EU. Today, he is the main obstacle on that path. Political relations in BiH are changing drastically in just a few weeks. Until yesterday, Izetbegović and Čović presented themselves as strong coalition partners.

Čović did not attend the meeting with Izetbegović yesterday. The leader of SDA stated that relations between SDA and HDZ will no longer be as before.

- What is worrying in all this is the passivity of the people, who have completely surrendered the creation of their lives to those interested in small, separatist interests. That is why for years we have been hearing stories about additional entities, some kind of transfers of competencies... So, in 2016, BiH has been set back two decades, and we are discussing things as if the war just ended – says Terzić.

- And it will remain so until the peoples realize that they must change something, and I fear that will take a long time, decades. 

The current games on the political scene in BiH are nothing more than cheap pre-election proving to one's national corpus that those in power are their best protector, and that they should be given an extension of trust. No one is truly interested in the European, let alone the Euro-Atlantic path of BiH. No one cares about the rule of law, the rule of law. No one cares about increasing pensions, employment, the fact that people are leaving the country... – warns Terzić.

He says that in BiH, technical matters are daily presented as political, so that the public deals only with them. Thus, for years in BiH, discussions have been held about the Coordination Mechanism, the City of Mostar, the implementation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, and when ideas run out, some new issues are opened just so that politics does not deal with real problems - the essence. 

- Peoples who are not concerned that we may have sold off all resources for the future through various debts, once they wake up - it will be too late – says Terzić.