Stepping forward into the future with the left

By: Sead Omeragic

When poet Vladimir Majakovski first published his poem 'Left March', he achieved a star success among Soviet communists. 'Left, left, left, who is stepping with the right...' he wrote. When an investigator read the poem, he immediately concluded: 'This must be a subversion. How could one march only with left leg?!'

A few days back, we got ourselves 'Jahorina Declaration' signed by some 20 professors and citizen activists. The aim was revealed before the event: Render support to the left parties and their citizen option.

Political leaders of SDP and DF were not in the forefront at the event. As for other left parties, only Emir Suljagic, from the Citizen Party signed under the text. During the event, the signatories of the declaration held tight the positions of the citizen left, talked about its future course and invited the public to support it. After the event, some curious things were said about the relationships in the left parties in BiH. One of the key initiators of the event, Neven Andjelic, claimed that the leaders of SDP, DF and GS 'are not on the best of terms' and that, he, as someone who does not live in BiH, tried to do something about 'joint appearance of those parties at the elections, as that is their only chance to beat the ruling nationalists'.  

As far as we know, Niksic and Komsic, as the leaders of the citizen left in BiH, had previously openly and clearly spoken negotiated the joint appearance, even uniting of those parties. That's why these claims about bad relationships between the two key left parties seem incredible. The story about human rights and citizen freedom seems to have repeated itself, only in a different form. National rights, as the ones promoted across BiH, have been for a long time subdued and endangered everything that is 'another' and 'different'. The citizen left remains the only point of departure from entirely unarticulated national strategies.

Cheap nationalistic ideas have only reinforced the poverty and general despair, yet they made their leaders and national oligarchies very rich. Contrary to the common greed of the nationalistic oligarchies, the left is, by default, founded on ascetism and sacrificing for universal goals and principles of social justice. It is presumed that its leaders and followers equally share consequences of any crisis.

By doing so, they directly prove their loyalty to the idea and confirm why they need to be trusted. The problem of the citizen left in BiH is its superficial involvement with social and class problems. Radical nationalistic attitudes can be defeated only by provision of a better life for the citizens. The text of 'Jahorina Declaration' contains hardly any reference to backwardness and poverty. The most important goals for this country are employment and development. The citizen left has always won people's hearts and minds with their uncompromising fight for justice in society. That political option has always dealt with basic human rights and creating equal opportunities for all.

For parties of the citizen left, freedom and dignity are the key values for every individual. The biggest problem of declarations such as this one is in that, unfortunately, they fail to consider the entire political landscape of BiH. Who are the social democrats in RS? Is there any essence in the alleged social democracy of SNSD and its leader, Milorad Dodik? How come that the position of citizen parties in Croat corps is entirely marginalized?

If the main goal of the declaration is to ban creating coalitions with national parties, than it would be almost impossible to constitute power with changing the Constitution. People who met on Jahorina know that quite well. That same Jahorina where, only several weeks back, a celebration event took place, giving awards to the creators of RS, indicted war criminals.

Bosnia and Herzegovina desperately needs changes. Critical questions to provoke any healthy mind: Has national politics brought any solutions a quarter of the century later? Who is protected by the national politics? Has national politics brought economic prosperity to any BH nation 25 years later?

Left or right, this country has not made any serious step towards the future. The citizen left, in this case, is a mere attempt to unweave the weave from the opposite end.