A broadening of political debate in Bosnia?

Yesterday I attended this event hosted at the US Institute of Peace;



Bosnia Herzegovina: One Country or Not

The title of this event proved to be quite controversial. The Bosniak American Advisory Council for Bosnia and Herzegovina sent a representative with a letter explaining their displeasure. Copies were available at the front desk, of which I have one. I don't really know much about this organization, but I could see their point: Bosnia suffered an extremely violent and bloody war from 1992-95. From a Bosniak perspective they lost many people to maintain a unified Bosnia.

So the event began with a brief mea culpa from the moderator about the title- the offense was quite unintentional. Moreover the speaker was more likely than not to agree with the BAACBH.

The panel only had one speaker, Fahrudin Radončić a Bosnian media magnate, critic of the country's current politicians and founder of a new political party called Union for a Better Future of BH. He and his party argue that the main reason for Bosnia's ongoing political crisis and tenacious nationalism is due to a lack of economic development.

He actually spent very little time talking about the subject in the title- only mentioning that he didn't belive that Milrad Dodik, (Prime Minister of one of the country's two major political entities) wasn't serious about joining his entity with Serbia. He rather snarkily stated that if he did that he did he could no longer be Prime Minister- and enjoy the legal and illicit benefits of that office.

Many of the problems he identified weren't new to me- the need to combat corruption for example. Other ones were specific and were new. For example, he had some specific examples of corruption that he would address. The most prominent of these was prosecuting war profiteers who had used the war in the 1990s to privatize Bosnia's government owned enterprises. They used their political connections to take over said businesses. Although he didn't use names- he knew, and I suspect other people in the room knew as well exactly who he was talking about. The result of all this corruption he argued was that the country was unable to spend its reconstruction funds and most were sitting in the bank.

Mr. Radončić gave his perspective on political participation in Bosnian politics. Bosnians had to contend with heavily entrenched interests if they wanted to participate in politics. He argued that he was justified in using his media empire as a base of power politically because Bosnia's current leaders use their influence to freeze most citizens out of political discussion. There is a bit of a "can't make omelets without breaking eggs" mentality here. It is notable that he looks up to Italy's Silvio Berlusconi. 

In many ways he talked the talk. He was a moderate and spoke of the value of including all Bosnians, and even working closely with Croatia and Serbia.

My impression was that he had picked up the politician thing rather well-- he was very good at using the questions to explain his message (and avoiding their uncomfortable aspects) and he stuck with his message. I'm not so certain that his fusion of politics and media is really a great direction for Bosnia's still emerging institutions. Sure, the goals seem good enough- put people to work on public works projects (Bosnia has an excessively high unemployment rate and needs work on its physical infrastructure) but in a sense he is proposing the exchange of one type of elite for another.

Most importantly he didn't address the social trust issue, which is a huge obstacle to broadening the inclusivity of the country's social and political institutions.