Since my previous article, published earlier this month, significant events have occurred in Bosnia.
The tragic death of baby Berina Hamidovic, whose denial of a passport to Serbia for life saving surgery, has sparked the beleaguered peoples of Bosnia to take part in mass protests. But can people power on the streets force tangible change to tackle the intransigence of elected politicians?
The last six weeks have seen lawmakers trapped overnight inside the Federal Parliament by protestors, as well as a 4000 strong crowd who brought downtown Sarajevo to a halt. Mothers with babes in prams, public servants, students and taxi drivers are among the disgruntled masses.
The cause of this is a refusal by politicians to pass a law to enable personal identity numbers to be issued- a perquisite for a passport and social security.
The Constitutional Court struck down the law on I.D. numbers, ordering politicians to correct the names of towns listed within the law.
The saga began when Bosnian Serb politicians insisted that the 13 digit I.D. number contain reference to the entity in which the citizen was born, while the federation politicians favoured retaining a generic number for the state as a whole.
This is just the latest instance in a continuing struggle by the Bosnian Serbs to have powers devolved to entity level and the Federation representative’s efforts to increase powers at central government level.
Significantly, the protests spread from the capital Sarajevo to Tuzla, Zenica, Mostar, and Banja Luka; alarming Serb politicians in particular. These are major cities and towns which incorporate all three ‘constituent groups’ as set out in the 1995 Dayton Agreement. Serbs, Croats and Bosniak Muslims from across the two entities have marched onto the streets to voice their anger and frustration at the political class.
The protests, dubbed the ‘baby-lution’, have been spearheaded by a group calling themselves JMBG, an acronym in Bosnian for ‘Unique Master Citizen Number’. There logo features a clenched fist atop a baby’s dummy.
JMBG issued a bold open letter to the International Community on July 1st stating: “the Members of the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina are DISMISSED”.
A sad reflection on the ethnic divide in Bosnian society came in Banja Luka,the capital of Republika Srpka (the Bosnian Serb entity), when the student protest leader, Nikola Dronjak, denied support for the protests going on simultaneously in Sarajevo, in the Federation (the Muslim/Croat entity).
Aside from the I.D. impasse, their placards are mirror images: action to tackle unemployment, better education, and, most importantly, an end to corrupt practices at all levels of Bosnia’s complex governmental system.
The beleaguered people may just have experienced a political awakening to the harsh truth that the Dayton settlement in1995 has cemented an ethno-centric model of politics into the very foundations of Bosnia’s constitution, providing a fluid conduit for elected representatives to continue the 1990’s ‘war by other means’- bringing political intransigence.
The inability to obtain a simple identity number, leading to a sick child’s death, has potentially tipped the balance and shockingly brought home the cruel realities of living under this corrosive system of government.
A temporary regulation to issue I.D. numbers has been passed by the government, but this lasts only for six months. The matter will resurface with a vengeance and provide the next excuse for a ‘Bosnian crisis’.
This should be the long overdue signal that to the ‘International Community’ that the future of Bosnia’s constitution, forged in the heat of war at Dayton, must be seriously recalibrated to create a functional political system in peace time.
A July 4th joint statement by the EU High Representative Catherine Ashton and European Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy, Štefan Füle, affirms to Bosnia’s leaders, in stark terms, that they will not step in to sort out the mess.
It states the EU remains committed to the country but: “that politicians must be accountable to the citizens, a feeling we have seen shared on the streets of several cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
It points to a landmark EU deal between Serbia and Kosovo as evidence that when taking courageous political decisions: “the impetus needs to come from brave and bold leadership”.
If the protests are the signal, then the response appears to be the shaming of Bosnia’s politicians into decisive action.
Croatia’s accession to the European Union on 1st July only serves to underline the scale of political inertia in neighbouring Bosnia.
The antidote to ‘Balkan psychosis’ (the cycle of victimhood and revenge) may transpire from Bosnians taking street protests directly to the front door of the political class; perhaps on the scale witnessed recently in Egypt’s Tahir Square.
A protestor has told me: “I am just one of many citizens asking politicians to do their job”.
The fledgling protests should act as a template for future activism, by a people unfamiliar with the art of mass protest to force political and social change. The Bosnians should realise that this response can be their best hope of confronting their political elites and saying “enough”.
Enough to fanning ethnic divisions, enough to the historical distortion of events and enough to politicians, whose desire for power, outweighs the genuine basic needs of the people.
**Update: On 18th July 2013 the Bosnian Parliament’s House of Peoples adopted amendments to the law to enable citizens to have JMBG.**
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