Dodik and Čović in 2022 - as before

Ernad Metaj

The joint criminal enterprise of disbanding BiH by HDZ President Dragan Čović and SNSD President Milorad Dodik continues. This is also clear from the recent appearances of the two on HRT, where they supplemented each other with synchronized statements, preparing the ground for turning BiH into Mostar from a few years ago.

After it became clear that Čović overestimated himself again, assuring the public that the Election Law would be agreed and that the legitimate representation of Croats would be ensured, he has hinted several times at the possibility of not holding elections next year. On the other hand, his partner ‘cemented’ any negotiations by publicly claiming that there would be no BiH without a third entity.

In that direction, the obstruction of the adoption of the state budget has also continued. BiH is the only country in the world to enter 2022 with a 2020 budget. The Minister of Finance is HDZ's Vjekoslav Bevanda, who seems to have vanished, so what he thinks and does is conveyed to us by the chairman of the BiH Council of Ministers, Zoran Tegeltija (SNSD). The Council of Ministers has made a decision on the temporary financing of BiH state institutions for the first quarter of 2022. SNSD and HDZ kept BiH on temporary financing throughout 2021. One of the goals is for BiH not to provide funds for the elections, and the price of that is being paid by the citizens of BiH, which Tegeltija himself admitted, falsely regretting that the health system burdened with coronavirus was left without 30 million KM.

It is already certain that the optimism of the Federal Prime Minister Fadil Novalic that the budget of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina will be adopted was unrealistic, although he himself admitted that there was an obstruction. The Minister of Finance is HDZ's Jelka Milićević. Like Bevanda, she is invisible to the public, and yet with enough power and arrogance to hold the citizens of the Federation of BiH hostages for the sake of realization of party interests.

Through their blind followers in the executive institutions, the Dodik – Čović duo are doing everything to block BiH and the FBiH with the sole goal of achieving personal interests by extending their own political life beyond the will of the citizens of BiH. At the same time, the destroyers of BiH are perfidiously trying to shift the blame on Bosniaks, and in recent months spinning the narrative of ‘islamization’, counting on gaining the favor of the international community.

Čović's latest attempt is to claim that DF President Zeljko Komsic was elected to the BiH Presidency with support from mosques. At the same time, Čović conceals the fact that Komšić is a member of the Presidency who received votes from most municipalities in the FBiH. This means that people voted for Komšić even in the municipalities where there are no Bosniaks whatsoever. This is how Čović feeds the media who keep silent about the fact that he personally had much greater and more open support from some church officials that the HDZ managed to install by suppressing true representatives of Catholicism who saw BiH as their state.

In addition, HDZ-controlled media continue to label Komšić as the second Bosniak member of the BiH Presidency. Čović went a step further by claiming that Bosniaks with two members of the BiH Presidency and the Foreign Minister had given up on basic constitutional principles, which of course is not true. Dodik and Čović are right when they invoke responsibility of the Bosniak policy, which has done much more for the two of them than for Komšić. The only difference is that the two of them are the product of bad policies of Bosniak representatives.

Čović and Dodik look more and more like a child on a potty from a joke in which his father predicts that he will become a politician because he looks them in the eye while spreading an unpleasant smell around (there is a short and illustrative street talk expression for that). The lie has become an integral part of the attacks on BiH by the leaders of the SNSD and HDZ, with the help of the radical media. There is this terrible construction based on the address of the High Representative in BiH Christian Schmidt to the BiH citizens, that has been completely taken out of context: ‘Schmidt claims that people send him inquiries and that he answers them. So Croats are not people...’ This underestimation of the intelligence of their own people clearly indicates the panic of the HDZ, because EU diplomacy is increasingly using the term ‘citizens’, instead of ‘constituent peoples’.

The reality on the ground in which the minority, thanks to the blockade mechanisms, imposes its will on the majority population, especially in the FBiH, is concealed with the noise about the alleged overvoting of Croats, although it is clear to everyone that no important decision in the past 10 years could have been adopted without Croats. One of the things that Čović will not admit is the fact that the HDZ, with its policy, expelled more Croats from BiH than the war did. That is why Čović's story that there is no BiH without Croats is disgusting to say the least, because it turns out that his compatriots are victims of a crazy policy of breaking up BiH at all costs. With this goal, the impression that Dodik has become a great Croat has been gaining ground lately. In the RS, one of the biggest ones because, together with Čović, he almost ‘ethnically cleansed the Croats’ from that area. Čović has already proved that Cyrillic is his primary script.

For years, the fields and mountains have remained deserted behind the current BiH authorities. Intoxicated by their own power, the leaders tend to forget the popular saying that these fields and mountains will eventually end up in the hands of those who want to plow the land and keep cattle on them. BiH will still be, but we will not be.