Editorial – Paddy Ashdown
Bosnia and Herzegovina has passed many many watersheds in the eleven long and difficult years since the coming of peace in 1995. But last Sunday’s elections must mark one of the most important of these.
I have thought it right to stay silent since I left BiH in February to leave a decent interval before I allow myself the luxury of commenting, not as a High Representative, but just as a friend. But this does not mean that I do not watch events in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the closeness of someone who still feels a very strong attachment to the country and concern for its future. I have been speaking quite a lot with Bosnia’s many friends abroad these last few months and I share with them some worries about the kind of things which some have been saying in BiH recently. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s integrity can never be placed in jeopardy without also placing in jeopardy the best interest of its people, any chance for a future in Europe and any hope of stability in the region.
In the last few months, BiH has not moved forwards; it has moved back wards. Opportunities to reform have been lost which ought not to have been lost. The International Community has pulled back from leadership as it must; but BiH’s politicians have not moved forward to fill the space as they should have done. BiH’s future as a modern European country has not moved closer; it has moved further away.
So these elections offer both a moment to change and an opportunity to return to the path of reform.
It is clear that, as many hoped that the old war time monolithic nationalist blocks are now beginning to break up – as many believed they would under the pressure of the reforms necessary to take BiH to Europe. The splits within the nationalists have created some very surprising outcomes – no doubt some of these will cause even more alarming calls to be made. Those who, because of their own internal divisions, have suffered must not be allowed to cause damage to Bosnia and Herzegovina and its future. Those who have gained should not allow themselves to be misled into believing that they have a mandate for instability and division which would reverse all the progress that BiH and the region have made over recent years. Bosnia’s new government must now shift up several gears, going into reverse is not an option.
One thing should be very clear. The nationalist groupings in BiH may be breaking up, but BiH will not.
BiH’s politics may at last be in the process of re-shaping themselves, just as the politics of its European neighbours have had to do when they were on the road to Europe. This is an opportunity not to be missed, for on it depends BiH’s ability to have a European future, not one tied to the past. These elections have produced a unique opportunity to reform the political structures of BiH so that it can be led by the forces who are looking to build a new future, not recreate an old past.
The reforms needed for Europe are not just buzz words, they are what would be needed anyway to make BiH better for its people. Progress on police reform will make BiH safer; economic and banking reform will make BiH more attractive to investors, raise wage rates and standards of living; getting into the EU will mean free movement and investment. The real turn in the road to reform will come when politics stops being a stage for individuals to grandstand on, but a platform to get people and BiH back to work and prosperity.
But this will require real courage from those who have won. The greatest responsibility now lies with them because with office comes responsibility. They need to show that they are prepared to push forward the reforms BiH so desperately needs with a renewed urgency, especially when it comes to constitutional reform and key SAA requirements such as police restructuring. It is concrete achievements like this that will determine whether the new government is an improvement on its predecessor. Those who are within the old nationalist parties who have lost need to take stock, too. In the end they failed to deliver enough reform and so failed to meet their own promises and the thirst of the people for jobs, justice and progress towards Europe. If the politics of BiH is re-shaping itself, they need to be part of that process – not left behind in the increasingly discredited ghettos of nationalism. The HDZ in Croatia understood that as has Montenegro. Serbia is slowly coming to the same conclusion and BiH must understand it too.
Reform has been tough these last five years. But then everyone must have known it would be. But it is still the only road which can offer BiH a future.
So the most important question for BiH now is not who forms the new government, but whether the citizens of BiH get a new type of government, one that has a shared platform rather than three and that is capable of delivering it rather than just dividing up the spoils of office.