Big Brother

Ladies and gentlemen, we got 'em!
Bosnia and Herzegovina have a new prime minister, Mr. Nikola Spiric, a Serb, as all media do not not fail to mention.

A little over three months after the elections, BiH has a new government, so it seems at least. Of course, everything still has to be agreed upon, and the positions within the government still have to be divided, but it seems like the coalition talks have ended. The new minister of Foreign Affairs is from a Bosnian Muslim party. He is jewish, though. Things that sound like a paradox in so many countries, are non here.

So, I can rest assured, knowing that this country will be governed again- my monitoring of the monitors during the elections was useful and succesful. Let's hope and pray that the coalition talks in Holland will be as fruitful.

Anyway, happy Orthodox Christmas. Because that's what it is today according to the Julian calendar.

A polling station, Maglaj

Results

So the monitors were monitored. And thus the elections took place in a dignified and orderly manner, but ofcourse not everybody is happy with the results. The Croat member of the Presidency Jovic for instance. He claims that the victory of his party is stolen by Bosniaks, and therefore he will not be a member of the Presidency any longer (I do not follow his rational...). He is quoted saying: "I am the Croat member of the presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, otherwise something shocking and perhaps tragic wil happen to this country." "Everything is open and everything is possible after what has happened." Right, loosing is an art, and he does not master it.
Jokes aside, it is quite shocking to hear a politician, even a President, say this about the result of a democratic process. It is in my eyes more than the words of a dissapointed loosing polictician; those are threaths, and maybe even incitements to violence and. Threaths to people and to a society. But of course we should interpret his words in a different light, and see it in the light of the emotion of the moment and so on and so forth. Right.

It can be roughly argued that in the Federation the more moderate parties won, and in the RS, as expected, the party of Dodik, know for its nationalistic rethorics, won. Researchers from an NGO from Sarajevo called 'Alumni Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies' found that politicians during their campaigns here devoted an average of 1,5 % of their speeches to concrete issues, the rest was lost on rethorics. Interesting....

I could have made a difference here too, by the way- I almost voted....
Since we managed to loose the monitors we were monitoring within thirty seconds after leaving the parking lot of our hotel, we went on our own to a polling station, just to see what it was like.
When we were there, someone came up to me and asked whether I, since I was a foreigner, wanted to help an elderly woman vote -obviously I look very trustworthy. She had problems with her eyes, which I interpreted as her being illiterate, but it seemed to me that she knew who she wanted to vote for. The voting process however is quite cumbersome. You have to fill out 4 different forms, and it was not all clear what everything was (my Bosnian is existing, but not good enough to be able to understand everything). So when I entered the booth with her, it turned out that she did not have a clue about who she wanted to vote for- I could fill out whatever I wanted!! I do believe in civic duty, but this was a bit too much. I apologized, and went to the polling chief and told him to find someone else, who reads Bosnian better, in order to really help her.... I could have been big, if only....

So much for the elections. As far as I understand my friends, nothing will change now- maybe the seating in Parliament, but not the policy...

The weather has changed- winter is coming. The last week was warm, with a very warm wind, like a Mistral. Today it started raining. Non-stop.

Yesterday I saw the movie 'Balcancan'. If you ever have the opportunity to see it, do it. People here are very good at taking the piss out of themselves, and this movie excells at it. No matter how bad the situation is here, they manage to make very black jokes about it....
Tommorow off to Belgrade. If anyone has tips, please let me know.

Monitor the Monitors

So, the decision is made, les jeux sont faits, alea iacta est, etc.etc.: I am going to Brcko for the weekend. To monitor the monitors, because of course I was too late with getting accreditation as an elections observer, or monitor. I have to admit that that pisses me off a bit, but hey, one can not have it all. So instead of having nothing, I am going to breath a friend down his neck, a friend who actually is a monitor in Brcko. I will be following him around, check every step and move he makes, ensure that he does do his democratic duty, and see what he is doing to enable the voting process in this young democarcy....... And ofcourse we will be informed on how the voting is done (although the procedure is not that alien to the one in Holland- one just fills out a box on a ballot...), and that it was done in the most honest and fair manner, and so on, and so on....

Brcko is an interesting place in BiH. It is neither part of the Federation, nor of the RS. It is an entity in itself, in which all ethnic groups live together. One can say it is sort of a mini- Bosnia. It is situated in the triangle BiH-Croatia-Serbia, so it will be interesting which (nationalistic) party is going to win there.

The other day a political rally of the SDA, the Bosniak/Muslim party was held in town. Afterwards there was a caravan of cars circling through Sarajevo. A lot of honking, a lot of flag waving and and a lot of screaming as if they had already won accompanied the caravan. One way or another it only seemed intimidating to me, while the idea behind a political rally is, in my view, the build trust. Tsja.....

Yesterday some unemployed youngsters from Kakanj, a city 50 km outside of Sarajevo, threw paint at the Presidency building. There where 4 of them, and they were protesting against the fact that they are unemployed, and that the government is not doing anything about it. Apparently it was one Serb, one Muslim, one Croat and one Jew. That would be too good to be true a story, and sounds like the beginning of a joke. However, there was no joking around when they were arrested- they were apparently beaten up quite severely. There was a video about it on youtube.com, but the maker of the video took it off the same day as he posted it, which I find very odd. It can not be found on the web anymore...

Nenad the neighbour, born in 1948 but also unemployed, told me that the world should know about this protest, and that it should do something about the situation here- when he told me this I decided not to get into a discussion with him about foreign aid to biH, because I can understand his frustration. He told me he will leave BiH next year (he only wants to leave once his 93-year old mother is dead, and he seesm quite convinced that taht will be next year), sell his house and move to Croatia. He says that the politicians there are equally bad, but it will be easier for him to go to Europe, at least. According to him BiH needs a revolution, in which the youth takes over. He claims that the same thugs who were in power during the war, pull the strings here now....

Anyway, Brcko it is. they have the biggest mall in BiH, so I have been told. But duty first: monitor the monitors!