The Trojka Has Suffered a Collapse of Political Credibility: Lies About a Good Standard of Living as a Mask for Bad Policies

By Muamer Bandić, MP in the KS Assembly and member of the Presidency of the Party of BiH

Every one of us has surely met a person who likes to lie at some point in life, and I believe that the readers of these lines are from personal experience aware of the peculiar magic that surrounds such people, but only when you meet them for the first time. However, each subsequent time, that magic, created by smaller or larger lies, somehow fades upon contact with the reality of human relationships, which are based primarily on credibility, or our trust in the person with whom we socialize or do business.

We can project this life situation into modern political communication. Every political party depends on the policies, values, and principles it advocates in the public sphere while fighting for power, and on how it implements them from the moment it takes power. And every government must be careful that what it says and represents (its political narrative) at least approximately corresponds to and explains the reality in which we live.

If there is a significant difference between the narrative, i.e., what the government tells us is true, and our reality, then the credibility of the government itself is seriously called into question. In other words, citizens find themselves in that strange situation where they wonder whether to believe what the government tells them or their own eyes? We, who live in Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, find ourselves in such a situation today!

When you listen and watch the prime ministers, ministers, and mayors of the ruling Trojka, which holds absolute power in BiH vertically, on various media and social networks, we in Sarajevo have never lived better. Moreover, the Trojka claims daily that we are doing so well that they are like Branko Kockica, with whom we can all sing together that in Sarajevo “houses are made of chocolate, and windows of jam” and continue to blindly ignore our daily lives.

To every constructive criticism, even from eminent intellectuals and people who brought them to power through their social engagement, like Denis Tanović or Jasmila Žbanić, they always have a ready answer: The previous government is to blame! Given that the Trojka has been governing the state of BiH and the Federation of BiH for 2 years, Sarajevo municipalities for 4 years, and the Canton of Sarajevo for 6 years, while some parts of this charlatan coalition have not left power since 2010, the question arises as to what previous government they are talking about and why they refuse to take any responsibility for the state of our country and society?

When this coalition was formed, they promised great changes and offered the smartest, bravest, most honest, and most capable people as a solution to all our problems.

At the municipal level, it turned out that their top Marvel superheroes are ordinary idlers, lazybones, narcissists, and purveyors of fog, who prefer cafes and social media photos to working with ordinary people and developing the municipalities they were given. In the end, of the four elected Sarajevo superheroes, they themselves dismissed one, and unsuccessfully tried to dismiss the other two throughout their mandate, thereby holding the municipalities and citizens captive to their clientelist conflicts within the coalition. Therefore, our daily lives will refute the narrative of each of their mayors, stating that we have had four lost years behind us. Years that no one will give back to us, and years in which the world has moved even further away from us, prisoners of the web of lies with which the authorities inundate us.

At the same time, the City of Sarajevo and the Canton of Sarajevo have never been dirtier or more neglected in terms of public services. This applies to long-term chronic problems such as transport infrastructure, stationary traffic, urban planning, water supply, and even the most basic public service issues like cleanliness and the maintenance of green areas. Whatever they have done in Sarajevo has been done through credit borrowing, with secret contracts they hide from the public, so we will never know how much we paid for something and how much money we will ultimately repay.

At the level of the Federation of BiH, they came to power through undemocratic means, by suspending the Constitution of the FBiH, and their governance has been marked by legal uncertainty and legal anarchy. At this level, we see a government that does not respect the Constitution, laws, and procedures and violates them whenever it suits them, from the illegal appointment of judges of the Constitutional Court of BiH to the illegal disposal of state property. Where they should respect the laws and help citizens, such as procuring essential medicines for clinics and health centers in Sarajevo, especially specialized medicines used to treat our seriously ill fellow citizens, they show no comparable agility, as they do when they need to accommodate coalition partners who keep them in power.

At the state level, they were full of talk about Europe, about some kind of progress and the European path. That story ended with the worst political crisis in the country's history, all because arrogant Sarajevo tricksters thought they could easily play in a higher league and successfully deal with seasoned political crocodiles who have been rolling us in the same mud for decades, Milorad Dodik and Dragan Čović.

However, despite the complete collapse of the European path, the government still persistently repeats the lie about some achieved progress. Through this, I call on all citizens of Sarajevo to come out in front of their houses or buildings, look around, and see for themselves what progress has been achieved and whether their municipalities or the City of Sarajevo look like a European metropolis of the 21st century. Wake up, open your eyes, and do not allow either Muamer Bandić or the current ruling oligarchy to interpret the world you live in!

And ask, especially ask those who hold public office in your name, and demand accountability for every unsaid word and every unmade move, because it is their duty to work for you. Do not let them lie to you, because they are doing it now arrogantly, coldly, and calculatedly, even on trivial matters that any child with an internet connection can expose, like Minister Forte's latest lie about how the word “state” is translated from English. A trivial lie, but with very serious consequences for our country and society if the proposed formulations had passed, simply because in our political system, there is a struggle for every word in official documents.

Yesterday, state property in Jahorina, regardless of the decision of the Constitutional Court of BiH, was registered as the property of a private company. The smaller BiH entity again disrespects the state and the decisions of our highest judicial instance, and those who sit in power in our name will not say a word, nor will they initiate any legal or political mechanism to protect the state. It is simply because they are not there for the state or for us, but for themselves, and to provide the necessary legitimacy to the enemies of this state to dismantle it completely. And in this case of state plundering, we will again hear from them that the previous government is to blame for this too, or possibly some vague proposal in the style of “it should be done,” where everything is vague about who should do what, all with the aim of shifting the burden of responsibility elsewhere and to someone else.

This ruling clique has lost all credibility, and it is truly a wonder that they themselves believe the lies they spew daily through censored and bought media. And to return to the beginning and the story of lies and liars. Such relationships become dangerous when those who are lied to are unaware of the situation they are in, remain asleep and lulled, and those who lie begin to believe the lies they sell, these good-natured and naive people. And that is the recipe for the complete collapse of a society!