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WED, 09 JAN 2002 09:17:24 GMT
Enduring and Surviving:
Republika Srpska Between 2001 & 2002
On the eve of a year in which, according to current trends, there will
be plenty of everything except money and easy living, the main question
is do we have anything to look forward to at all. Maybe we should go
back to looking forward to the year 2001, when we cannot do that with
1990, a year from which neither locals nor the foreigners have learned
anything.
AIM Banja Luka, December 20, 2001
Only 2002 -- another year with two zeros, as RS Premier Mladen Ivanic
put it in a talk show on Belgrade's Pink TV, joking that it reminded him
of "a certain place" -- could mourn the demise of 2001. Ivanic's first
year in office has failed to reconcile voters and the foreigners after
Milorad Dodik spent three years as premier, and his cabinet eventually
became a puppet that kept gaining support of the latter at the expense
of the former. Dragan Kalinic's Serb Democratic Party was in charge of
voters, and this party is likely to enjoy majority support in 2002, as
well as another ten years after its political demise. Ivanic was in
charge of the foreigners, and was probably the only politician in
Republika Srpska whom most voters did not perceive as a traitor and
foreigners as a hardcore nationalist.
Republika Srpska's most important post-war project -- creating a cabinet
supported both by voters and the foreigners, however, was not a success.
True, it did not stand much of a chance either, because the foreigners
weren't ready to take for granted the Serb Democrats' claims that they
had reformed. This is why at the end of the year Wolfgang Petritsch took
it upon himself to reform them either by consent or by force, showing
that the foreigners not only did not trust them, but that they did not
trust their signatures either, or the paper in which Kalinic, Mirko
Sarovic and Dragan Cavic accepted everything they demanded of them.
What is also true is that the Serb Democrats did nothing to make the
foreigners feel more guilty at the end of the year. The horrible May
riots in downtown Banjaluka during a failed (first) attempt to mark the
beginning of the reconstruction of the Ferhadija Mosque, when one Muslim
was killed, worked in favor of all those who are against Republika
Srpska's survival, and even more of those who in November 2000 tried to
convince Petritsch to disband Kalinic's party.
Under this ongoing pressure, Ivanic reduced the strategy of RS's
survival to two principles: cooperation with the Hague tribunal and
budget stability. Or to make it more clear, the former principle stood
for enduring and the latter for surviving. No one was interested in
serious political reforms that would consolidate the economy or provide
for even basically successful privatization; the foreigners kept waiting
for Ivanic's semi-recognized cabinet to fall, and Ivanic kept quiet
about political reforms because as soon as anybody mentioned them,
one-third of his coalition partner's officials would begin to see
themselves as company managers, the other third as defendants in The
Hague, and the last third in early retirement.
The biggest chance for political reform in RS in 2001 could have come
from the virus of democracy that a year before, albeit chaotically,
gained the upper hand in Serbia. There has never been a better incentive
from the neighborhood in that direction. Sarovic's and Ivanic's
government had a chance to take the bitter pill of cooperation with the
tribunal and reviewing the past (which they for some unknown reason
consider lethal) together with Serbia, finally aware that it is not
possible or sensible to be greater Serbs than Serbs from Serbia proper.
True, it was not easy, but it is clear that the moment was missed for
good, and no better chance for siding with Belgrade in this matter will
ever come, particularly not in 2002. Instead, the Serb Democrat
representatives in the government, Kalinic and Sarovic, in 2001 tried to
side with the patriotic image of Vojislav Kostunica, whose position was
then still intact. And the result was that while they did not help
themselves, they did Kostunica such a disservice that whenever he meets
with foreign diplomats, especially from the U.S., the meeting ends with
demands that he stop supporting nationalists in RS.
They fared more or less the same when in Sept. 11 and in the ensuing
global campaign against terrorism they saw their chance. After ten years
of mistakes, the politicians in power in Banjaluka did not think twice
before returning to their global mission of the past and attempts to
explain to foreign diplomats that they have been fighting Islamic
fundamentalism for a whole decade. The latter, of course, instead of
apologizing for all the evils and bombs that befell Republika Srpska and
make them the champions of the international battle against terrorism,
asked them when they would hand over Karadzic and Mladic.
The changes in Serbia and the global anti-terrorism campaign have not
only failed to strengthen RS but have also shown that the government in
the Serb entity -- except for insisting on the implementation of the
weakened Dayton agreement and trying with passionate patriotism to fend
off criticism from their counterparts in the Muslim-Croat Federation,
quite aware of all RS's weaknesses and hoping that the day of its
political demise is nearing -- have no other serious strategy for
ensuring its survival. This is why demands that all war crimes indictees
be extradited, that the RS constitution be changed and that Bosniaks be
represented in the government in accordance with the 1991 census, will
make the year 2002 very different from the year 2001. Whereas the latter
boiled down to enduring and surviving, the former could well boil down
only to enduring because nothing remains to survive on.
The problems will persist because in 2001, apart from their mantra about
Dayton, Serb politicians lacked any other political ideas, and in 2002
the same will be the case with the foreigners. If elections, as theory
claims, are the supreme expression of democratic will, why should a
cabinet be formed according to a census? In conditions when there are
not multiethnic parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a cabinet can be made
multiethnic only in two ways. The first is to do it in the 1990 fashion
-- to divide it among nationalists, and make up for the discrepancy
between election results and the pre-war ethnic makeup by appointing,
for example, Naser Oric as the Serb Democratic Party candidate for RS
interior minister, or Momcilo Mandic as the Party of Democratic Action
candidate for interior minister of the Muslim-Croat entity. If you find
this impossible, consult Ejup Ganic, the 1990 staunch Yugoslav. Thus a
new, grotesque alliance of nationalist parties would be made, the same
one that was in the game when the whole thing started.
The other way is international arbitration which would bypass elections
and appoint Zdravko Grebo as RS president and Miodrag Zivanovic as
president of the Muslim-Croat entity. In other words, unable to
implement the principle of multiethnicity from above, the foreigners
would attempt to do it from below. And when they realize that the Serb
Democratic Party is incapable of running in elections with 30 percent of
their ticket consisting of Bosniaks, and that the Party of Democratic
Action would not have any more Serbs as its candidates, it will be yet
another of their many mistakes which – as it is customary -- the natives
will be the only ones to suffer from.
The Hague tribunal will be another issue that will mark 2002. In this
regard next year will be the most dynamic, because the fate of Karadzic
and Mladic will finally be resolved, and, regardless of what happens to
the two of them, they will continue to further undermine the stability
of Republika Srpska. As far as the economy is concerned, if RS avoids
all-out bankruptcy, it should not come as a surprise if in a year's time
the Nobel Prize for Economics goes to Radovan Karadzic whose 1997
economic program consisted of only three words: "Endure, endure,
endure."
On the eve of a year in which, according to current trends, there will
be plenty of everything except money and easy living, the main question
is do we have anything to look forward to at all. Maybe we should go
back to looking forward to the year 2001, when we cannot do that with
1990, a year from which neither locals nor the foreigners have learned
anything.
Zeljko Cvijanovic
(AIM)
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