the spectre of a lost future

8/12/2019 The Spectre of a Lost Future

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The spectre of a lost future

Larisa Kurtovi 09/02/2014

Dissatisfaction is like a monster, powerless when it is born, terrifying when it

grows strong.

(Mea Selimovi, Dervi i Smrt)

In the sea of press reports and commentaries that have assaulted us over the

past few days, one of the themes that has attracted great interest, especially

in Sarajevo, has been the question of whether these the most radical

protests ever in BH were staged or are the result of political manipulation.

The lessons learned from the past have lead the average citizen to inevitably

maintain a high level of skepticism toward official versions of events

everybody is convinced that that the truth is hidden behind the scenes, that

the picture of reality they are offered is just an illusion, and that citizens are

always the victims of some kind of manipulation or conspiracy. Considering

the types of journalistic and political spin we have witnessed over the pastfew days, this kind of critical analysis has its place. However, in the case of

these protests, even if some of the violent tactics used by the protesters were

indeed motivated in part by private political interests, what has happened in

Bosnia and Herzegovina over the last few days absolutely transcends the

frame of this alleged manipulation. Even if paid thugs were brought to the

various headquarters of the government , a simple truth remains: on the

streets of cities across the country, there appeared in the very same moment

thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of mistreated, abused, humiliated

and defeated workers, pensioners, youth and citizens, a mass of people so

diverse in its political orientations, thoughts, fears and hopes, that the only

thing that could hold it together was a shared, long-suppressed and above all

justified anger.


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War and the postwar nightmare of BH.

What we have been witnessing over the last couple of days is a response to

more than two decades of multifaceted political violence that has been visited

on the citizens of this country on the part of criminal, arrogant, and

incompetent political structures, which are not only uninterested in public

problems, but have managed to grossly enrich themselves by pillaging state

property, factories, companies and public goods that belonged to all of us.

On top of all that, the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina paid the highest

price for the collapse of the former joint state, not only by having to survive

the hells of war, but also through the postwar nightmare that imprisoned

them while they were still drowsy, disoriented and full of hope that the

Dayton peace would lead to some kind of normal life and a future worth

hoping for. To say that what has been happening is just a scene from the

political scenography of parties that hope to win the upcoming elections

would mean to dismiss the collective indignation (which is nearly universally

shared, regardless of different positions about violent methods) and the

political significance of the massive injustice and dispossession that took place

here under the guise of ethnonationalism and the ethno-emancipatorypost-Dayton division of power.

A new collective political subject

The protests have opened space not just for a changing of the guards in

political parties, whose moves are more or less predictable, but also for the

articulation of a new political platform that will genuinely serve the interests

of the citizens of this country. For the first time in several decades, it is

possible to imagine a collective political subject that is not equated with the

ethnos or nation, which unites different classes and generations, and has the

potential to contest the existing governing structures. That potential has to be

seized and productively channeled--otherwise an even greater hopelessness


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awaits us. In this regard, the people of Tuzla have gone the farthest, by

offering the authorities a clear list of demands together with

recommendations as to how they can be realised. All the other protest

centres are lagging behind Tuzla, especially Sarajevo, where the public is

instead debating whether the use of force was justified, and whether the

hooligans are members of or a threat to the entire political community. One

part of public opinion recognises that the young demonstrators are also

victims of the system in which they grew up, and sees them as the faces of a

new, aggressive and out-of-control generation, which no longer has anything

to lose because nothing has ever been offered to it. For others their

appearance has awakened the well-known local patriotic impulse to exclude

anyone who does not fit into the useless mythological narrative about the

spirit of Sarajevo (earlier: peasants, primitive people, now hooligans).

Alongside such petit-bourgeois sentiments, a different kind of fear is

emerging among the people who the scenes from the centre of the city

remind too much and too painfully of the war. This is a real, justified pain and

fear (shared by the author of this text), but it also a sign that many are still

relying on the old mantra everythingis okay as long as they are not

shooting, which has in part prevented events like these from occurringearlier. This phrase may still have some force in Sarajevo, whose residents are

tolerating (not to say enjoying) the highest living standard in BH, but it no

longer seems to have such power in Tuzla, which boasts the highest

concentration of unemployment.

Act before the powerholders regroup

Whatever the case may be, violent acts like stone-throwing, setting fire to and

looting administrative buildings, as well as confrontations with police, however

unpleasant and disagreeable they might be in our eyes, are the only thing

that have momentarily upset the arrogant powerholders, who up until now

have not felt the need to respond to friendly and peaceful civic


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demonstrations that have tried to draw their attention to problems that their

neglect and intentional obstruction have brought into the lives of small,

ordinary people. Before the powerholders regroup and they have already

started, with their appalling claims about how they are the least irresponsible

and corrupt of all, and how they had tried to draw attention to problems even

before citizens have to act. They have to redirect their focus away from the

debate about young hooligans, many of whom have already been severely

beaten and punished, and toward organizing logistically, creating a new

framework for action and a long term strategy, and finally, toward articulating

a list of concrete demands along with suggestions on how they can be met.

In the process of developing and implementing these plans, the most

important thing is to keep in mind the central goals and motives for the

mobilisation, so that it does not end up, as has happened many times before,

lost in pointless arguments, in the fit of fractionalisation and internal conflict,

on which the political elites are certainly counting. It would be good to begin,

for example, with pressure for radical reductions in salaries and other forms of

compensation in the legislative and executive branches of government at all

levels, and with quick and efficient prosecution of people charged and

suspected for political and economic crime and corruption. Those kinds ofdemands, in contrast with appeals for the wholesale reconstruction of the

state, will secure support from the entire public. The slogans heard in Banja

Luka, in Sarajevo Tuzla, and in other cities were none other than: Thieves!

Elections are not a good option

Finally, one must stress that some of the solutions that have been offered,

for example early elections, are not a good option, because they rely on a

system that is deeply rooted in the status quo. The idea that elections in this

post-Dayton regime are the only legitimate way of bringing about change is

the biggest lie that has been served to the public from the end of the war

until now. During elections, in which nearly half of the resigned population


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does not even participate, voters choose among the existing political

optionsvetted by the parties themselveswhose representatives can

distinguished from one another according to the following taxonomy: bad,

worse and worst. The established political parties use a whole arsenal of

time-tested methods, including threats, blackmail, promises of contracts and

work, ideological manipulation and good old ethnonationalism to persuade

voters that there are their only game in town. To make things even more

absurd, after the elections, even the losing parties have the opportunity to

occupy influential positions if they enter the right coalitions. That system suits

political parties perfectly well, allowing them to become masters of the fates

and managers of all the resources needed by the residents of all of the

localities in BH. That same system, despite the partiesapparent competition

for support, makes possible for them to function in perfect, perfid symbiosis.

The right to dreams for all

What has to change is the basic relationship between the powerholders and

the citizens who pay their absurdly high salaries for very little meaningful

work, the citizens who are the source of the tax revenues from which thestate lives, and who through their work created the factories and firms the

governing parasites squandered to build their private villas and buy their

luxury Audis. Those are the same leeches who have brought citizens to the

end of their patience, and sometimes to the edge of existence. The children

of this arrogant, self-satisfied oligarchy do indeed have much to lose but

they do not have greater rights to life, future, security, ambitions and

dreams than the children of workers in Tuzla or than the young delinquents

who set fire to the buildings of the cantonal governments and other localities

on Friday, 7 February. In the name of those sacrificed children for whom the

citizens of this country protested in 2008, 2013 and 2014, children which this

octopus-state has betrayed by destroying the firms where their parents

worked, the entire system of social protection, health care, public education,


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and even the miserable means for issuing identity documents citizens must

continue to come out to the streets and by considered methods demand a

different, better future than the one that is cynically smiling at them from the

abyss into which they have been staring for the past 22 years. The floodgates

are open forward!

the spectre of a lost future

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