The winners of our lost years

By: Sead OMERAGIC

One national news website has pronounced Fadil Novalic, the Prime Minister of Federation BiH the 'winner of the year'. As we are the country of absurd, the first person of the loser entity has become the winner of the year. It hardly makes any sense to promote the government officials nominated by political parties in the entity with 360,000 unemployed citizens.

The number of the employed citizens in the country is 754,000. There are 490,000 unemployed. Therefore, only 250,000 more than the unemployed. The percent of registered unemployment is nearly 40%.

Some 14,000 persons are no longer on the list of the unemployed of the Employment Bureau. However, that does not come close to the real data.

About 6,000 people went to labor in Slovenia, some 14,000 to Germany. Therefore, about 20,000 young and qualified workers went to these two countries. What about all the others?

Some say that the exodus towards Germany and West Europe reminds of the one from the sixties and seventies of the last century when, in the course of one decade, about 1.1 million people left former Yugoslavia. More than 50,000 workers were leaving Yugoslavia each year in search for work. These departures seem to be on the rise.

In our social and political context, pronouncing politically elected leaders as 'winners' is nothing short of mocking the people. In BiH, we know very well who real businessmen are. Those who deserve rewards for their efforts in development and employment. People know those individuals. But what is the purpose of the folks who receive rewards while everything is falling apart? Climbing up to the pole of Titanic?

Unfortunately, it is an open secret that the 'best manager' rewards can be bought. The 'Best Manager' for 2017 event took place in the beginning of December in Banja Luka. Almost every other 'best manager' was a public company director or a government official. The best ministers, the best mayors were receiving awards. Among those awarded were hospital directors, directors of water and sewage companies, regional roads, directors of public companies, even the members of Novalic's government.

How much money has it been paid for dozens of framed diplomas? In civilized and just world, all awards have their financial part. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, all awards have their price tag.

This rarely seen circus ended with 50-ish award winners for all kinds of stuff, mainly from the Federation. The winners were applauded, the citizens got slapped.

Unfortunately, in the forefront of the circus was the winner of the year.

Every now and then we get robbed. One could say that Novalic is the winner of another lost year for us.