Zur Zeit- Dr Josip Stjepandić: Bosnia-Herzegovina remains a trouble spot

Wars of disintegration in the former Yugoslavia gave rise to seven new states, including the former Austro-Hungarian annexation area of ​​Bosnia-Herzegovina (BH), which has since been in a permanent state of crisis as an international protectorate.

In addition to a bloated administrative apparatus that promotes corruption, the different political ideas of the three constituent people (Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats) are causing problems for the young state. The Serbs only want Serbia and reject any BH proposal. In terms of foreign policy, they aspire to Russia. The (Muslim) Bosniaks see themselves as permanent victims of Western conspiracies and want a unitary state that they don’t have to share with the Serbs and Croats. In terms of foreign policy, they behave like the western Turkish (or Iranian) province. As the smallest of the constituent peoples, the Croats reject the state in which they are deprived of their ethnic and human rights, as in the former Yugoslavia. With their aspirations to the EU and NATO, the Croats in BH can hardly achieve anything, although most of them are Croatian and therefore also EU citizens.

The elections for the state presidency and the parliaments, which took place on the election day on October 2, should have bring improvement. There weren’t really good conditions for this. The central election commission was composed in an illegal manner without examining the qualifications of the candidates and in the past ruled pro-Bosniak. The electoral register contains 3.3 million names, although the country’s population is only 2.06 million, which is very conducive to electoral fraud. After all, the constitutional court already quashed an important rule for the composition of the Chamber of Peoples in FBH in 2016. The Bosniak leadership used this rule, issued by HR Wolfgang Petritsch in 2002, to squeeze the numerically weaker Croats out of power. The best example of this is Željko Komšić, who, despite his numerous anti-Croatian outbursts, has been elected Croatian member of the three-man state presidency with the Bosniak vote against bitter resistance from the Croats since 2006. In 2018, Komšić even wanted to prevent the construction of the Pelješac Bridge, the largest EU project in Croatia, with a lawsuit before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

The elections passed peacefully, despite many complaints of irregularities, which OSCE monitors seem to have missed. Among the winners was again Komšić, who outperformed his Croatian competitor Krišto by 43,000 votes. The results from 13 constituencies, where the number of voters is higher than the number of inhabitants and at the same time very few Croats live, show that he got his votes exclusively from the Bosniaks. There he achieved a lead of 43,000 votes.

The star of the election day was HR Christian Schmidt, who followed the Austrian Valentin Inzko in 2021. Since the Bosniak leadership let all Croatian proposals to change the electoral rule in terms of so-called legitimate representation (each ethnic group elects its own representative) come to nothing, Schmidt issued a temporary rule after the polling stations were closed, by increasing the number of seats in the house of the people, so that the Bosniaks cannot circumvent the blocking minority of the Croatian representatives. This temporarily ensures that the Bosniaks, who have been massively incited by Ankara and Tehran, cannot take over 100% of the power in the BH Federation and two thirds in the state as a whole, as desired.

The photo of Ambassador Mlinarević casting her vote in a ballot box made out of a shoe box in the embassy in Prague shows how seriously such an election should be taken. The law prescribes a transparent box. Mlinarević, a member of the Komšić cadre, is a dental laboratory assistant by trade, although a postgraduate diploma is required by law to be an ambassador, and is more conspicuous for her poorly diplomatic choice of words than for her achievements.

HR Schmidt wanted to prevent a deadlock situation by shortening several decision deadlines. However, counting the votes has already taken 3 weeks.

The talks about forming a government are going rather slowly because there is still no clear majority among the Bosniaks. At present, it looks as if the Bosniaks are represented by an eight-party coalition in the government, which is unlikely to be conducive to stability. The Serbs and Croats are likely to be represented by their strongest parties, SNSD and HDZ.

BH exists today only through external pressure because the external powers do not want the state of BH to be divided. Nevertheless, the cohesion between the three peoples is extremely low. There are only two common holidays: New Year and Labor Day. The often invoked EU perspective lacks any practical basis. In addition, after January 1, 2023, BH will be separated from Croatia by the iron Schengen border. If external pressure were to ease or even disappear, then the next war for BH’s legacy would be at hand. The only question is whether this would come from the Serbs or the Bosniaks.

Figure caption:

Dental laboratory assistant as ambassador – shoe box as ballot box

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