Zelenika: Time to say goodbye to those who divide us into Herzegovinians and Bosnians

Diana Zelenika is a member of the Presidency of HDZ 1990 and a deputy in the State Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In an interview with Patria, she presents her views on the political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the policy implemented on behalf of the Croatian people in BiH by HDZ BiH and the president of that party, Dragan Čović, the relationship between Čović and Milorad Dodik... As a war veteran, Zelenika responds to the war rhetoric that has been frequently used in Bosnia and Herzegovina in recent weeks.

You are a cardiologist. On one occasion, you joked and said that with your sharp statements you aim for the heart. Can politics "have a heart" or "reach the hearts of citizens"?

Zelenika: I graduated from the Aleksa Šantić Gymnasium in Mostar and, apart from Emina, which even current gymnasium students know, although they accuse us that it is not so, I remember the verses: "Blessed is he who has tears, in him the heart has not died." Every job, including politics, can have a heart if the person performing that job has one. However, as a cardiologist, I would invite many for an examination because at least one ventricle has died in them, so they have no tears for their own, nor for other peoples and citizens living in BiH.

You openly advocate for the constituent status of all peoples in BiH. We have just had the opportunity to see that SNSD and HDZ in the state Parliament of BiH did not vote for the constituent status of Serbs in cantons with a Croatian majority. How do you explain this, what could be the goal of such an agreement?

Zelenika: We live in times of blessing soup kitchens and transformer stations, full churches and mosques in whose front rows sit mostly those who do not live their faith. Because if they put their faith into practice, they would treat others the way they want others to treat them. I consider the initiative submitted at the 57th session of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH to be populist, but in times dominated by saber-rattling for the personal benefit of those who also fled from war earlier, we must send a message of respect for the other and the different. The message of HDZ BiH is the renunciation of Croats in the Republic of Srpska, and of SNSD the renunciation of Serbs living in the areas of the Federation. And while in BiH some dream of segregation and unitarism, for others secessionism is the guiding thought.

How long will the Dodik – Čović cooperation last? The opposition criticizes that this relationship is inarticulate, disastrous for Croats as well

Zelenika: I sincerely hope that this interest-love affair will last until October this year, when they will be punished by members of their own people. It is time to say goodbye to those who divide us into Herzegovinians and Bosnians, and then into those from Posavina or those from Central Bosnia and various ad hoc areas, to those who offer a new genetic code but disperse their people on a biblical scale.

Today, many speak against the constituent status of peoples, about extinguishing the constituent status of peoples in BiH, about constituent status as a socialist concept, etc. However we call it, Croats, Bosniaks and Serbs, as well as those from the category of Others, are autochthonous peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and no one can deny them their autochthony, nor their constitutionally guaranteed equality. However we call national equality, it must exist...

Zelenika: I am not a sociologist, but I know how to read the Constitution of BiH, in whose preamble it says that Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs are constituent peoples. Those who deny this will first have to change the Constitution, and for those changes there is no necessary two-thirds majority. From this question, I read the issue of legitimate representation of peoples, including the Komšić problem. The question then arises of the constituent status of the Croatian people in BiH, who has already been represented for two terms by a Bosnian, as Komšić declares himself, elected by a majority of Bosniak votes. It is also true that Dragan Čović previously declared himself a Yugoslav, so even in the case of the current Chairman of the Presidency of BiH, legitimacy is questionable. We will have to seek new solutions.

You were a doctor in the war. How do you react today when you hear someone's war threats?

Zelenika: As a doctor, volunteer and war veteran, memories of blood, tears, amputated body parts, and if you will, corpses and the tears of mothers, fathers, wives with small children in their arms who do not know, and fortunately will not remember, the cry of the soul for their loved ones, come flooding back. In my ears, the siren for alarm buzzes, the whistle of grenades mixed with the crying of immobile patients and the blast of a destroyed city, and in my nostrils I can again smell gunpowder. And those who spent the war selling sofas in Belgrade, or lying on the seashore, and some who were kept like gold in safes, more precisely those who saw the war only on TV screens, they would now pretend to be protectors of national interests and threaten war with water pistols. Some of them were not prevented by all this from taking a cloverleaf or some other insignia and recognition, as well as a salary supplement for those who spent their youth in the trenches. And if they were to produce a war, they, their children and grandchildren would be taken care of in some exotic places with substantial "offshore" accounts.

Practically, you were in the fire all the time. Some other people were on work duties, far from the horrors of the front, and today they present themselves as great patriots. I am also thinking of the HDZ leader Dragan Čović. Why have true patriots, honest and credible people, not won elections so far?

Zelenika: True patriots have grown tired of the absurdities of war, aware that every mother cries in the same way and that war has never brought good to anyone. And the only ones to whom it brought good, and who did not even participate in it, used that opportunity. By changing their membership books from the League of Communists, through UJDI / Association for Yugoslav Democratic Initiative/ to that of HDZ BiH only in 1996, they diametrically changed their beliefs and rhetoric, all for the purpose of personal power and enormous enrichment.

And instead of true patriots taking prominent positions after the war, those for whose lustration I have long advocated presented themselves as the only protectors of national interests, infiltrated all pores of society, and with already proven methods, in a hard-won peace, engage in propaganda and psychological warfare, and operate more outside than on the edge of the law.

Can HDZ 1990 rival HDZ in the next elections?

Zelenika: It depends on what! If it is about corruption, crime and nepotism, we do not want to rival them there. Or perhaps you mean the years of false promises of a third entity, a channel in the Croatian language, two components in the federal ministry of veterans... They are champions there too. Not to forget purchased diplomas, fictitious jobs, extracting money from public companies, buying election boards, voters, blackmail with jobs, scholarships, pensions... of the suffering Croatian people who have no right even to choose legitimate representatives... they are champions again. We do not want to rival them there either. We will rival them with brave, educated people who, in common parlance, have no walnut in their pocket and who are not threatened by community service work.