An old friend of mine from the journalist's guild, who used to also work in Oslobođenje and with whom I occasionally exchange quick home analyzes of daily political events, believes that corruption is the biggest evil of the ethnically divided Bosnian society, while I believe that it is nationalism. We did not discuss which of the two of us is closer to the truth since we agree that nationalism and corruption are the face and the reverse of the same coin, a thick fog that hides a great robbery. It is also understood that corruption, like a worm that eats an apple from the inside, insidiously destroys the entire society, producing lawlessness and an ever-deepening gap between the rich and the poor.
On the other hand, aggressive nationalism always ends up as fascism. It must not be forgotten that in the war that was waged against multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina in the nineties, hundreds of thousands of civilians died at the hands of nationalists, whether they were driven from their homes, killed and taken to camps. The almost daily exchange of political grenades between Serb, Croat and Bosniak nationalists still causes fear of new conflicts, so among those who survived the horrors of the war, the ideal of peace in Bosnia is summed up in the famous sentence "Just don't shoot". The people don't seem to be too interested in something better than that, if it could be achieved by major political upheavals and by punishing those for whom they voted for decades.
"Nationalism - it's always a pregnant woman", said a wise Italian, which shows how difficult it is to deal with this evil. Just like with corruption. The ordinary world does not even understand what, say, political corruption is, the most severe form of this social disease. Our politically unaware people, and that is a very large population in Bosnia and Herzegovina, heard that it was some kind of theft, but they are not very excited about it. His usual comment is: "Ours are stealing, but theirs are also stealing." It's just not something that people can't sleep over. Completely different emotions are evoked by public manifestations of nationalist ideology, such as the lining up of Visegrad and Bratunac Chetniks or the highlighting of stadium slogans, such as the most infamous one among them - "Knife, wire, Srebrenica". Anxiety, anger and disgust of Bosniaks, but also of many other people, became a natural reaction to such provocations. But they don't stop, they are born by that "constantly pregnant woman" who, by manipulating ethnic emotions, is made such by the leaders of the people of the Western Balkans.
It seems that Americans are more sensitive to corruption than to nationalism, probably because the dollar is their worldly god, so any theft of money belonging to the state is punished quickly and efficiently. The US administration's anti-corruption campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina, codenamed "The Black List", is focused on the criminal activities of members of nationalist oligarchies. Its strategists believe that this is the best way to remove such people from power and the country will finally prosper. Currently in the center of political and media attention is the "capitalist" from the aforementioned list, Milorad Dodik, the author of the secessionist script for the "film" that he knows will never be realized. Outgoing US Ambassador Michael Murphy, following the instructions of his Treasury Department, did not leave him alone, asking him one and the same thing: "Where's the money, My Lord?" He didn't ask him about his personal health, but what he spent one billion and one hundred million KM on, the sum for which Dodik's government took on debt in the last 18 months and only on one of the stock exchanges, Banja Luka. Dodik, as usual, pretends to be unskilled whenever he is faced with such and similar questions and apparently does not understand what Ambassador Murphy is talking about. Better to say, he interprets the not at all harmless American request to give an account to the public as an insult to the Serbian people and the conspiratorial intention of an international mafia group to destroy the Republic of Srpska, honoring Ambassador Murphy with the most insulting words. Just like the TV journalists who also get on his nerves.
Corruption and large-scale smuggling prevented former Montenegrin president Milo Đukanović from leaving power, on whose throne he, together with the party he was the leader, was for three decades. However, it was not removed by the powerful American hand, it was done by the Montenegrin voters. Unlike Dodik, Đukanović did not hide his money. After the street protests, which were dominated by the mentioned issue, he received a delegation of pensioners, and one of them asked him: "And what about your money, Milo? People say you're smuggling cigars, and we're barely making ends meet?" "And how would you receive your pension if I didn't smuggle?" Djukanović answered him. It is a long and well-known story about a man who introduced smuggling as a business of state interest. He bought several speedboats with which the Italian mafia supplied him with large quantities of cigarettes and thus filled the state budget. He was interrogated several times at the Court in Bari, but was acquitted with the help of the local mafia. Those who came to power after him are now demanding that he be tried in Podgorica.
People from the American administration believe that Dodik fell into the mousetrap of their anti-corruption campaign. And that he will not come out of it unscathed. But there is one problem - the American judiciary does not live here, and ours is more similar to the judiciary in the Italian province of Calabria, which is under the control of the mafia there, than to the judiciary in democratic countries.
And then who will remove Dodik and other "capitalists" from the black list of their corruption scalps if it is known that our state prosecutors and judges are on "sick leave", under investigation or in prison? If the HJPC premises are invaded by the special police as if they were a mafia nest, then that is the end of any story about a failed judicial system.
Bonus video:
