Referendum for Croats in B&H

A New HDZ's Pre-Election Trick

AIM Sarajevo, October 23, 2000

In these past ten “most difficult years with them” as they like to boast, we have already got used to being surprised by one of numerous tricks from the rich repository of political games without frontiers of the ruling B&H parties. This time HDZ has taken a step further with a mouthful of stories about nations and their rights, offering a referendum to the Croat people in B&H.

A referendum? The last time the Croat people participated in a referendum in 1992, they unanimously voted for united B&H while HDZ stuffed that fact up its shirt and did everything quite contrary to the will of the people expressed at that referendum. So much for the love of HDZ for its people, its political will and the referendum. This time these same people, true, in much smaller numbers than in 1992 since HDZ has cleared B&H of quite a number of Croats, should give their answer to some question of of the following type: “Are you satisfied with the Constitutional and legal status of the Croat people in B&H?”.

Can you imagine the Croats' reply to such a question? The other two nations, as well as all citizens of B&H would give the same, alike to a hair answer to that question. The answer would probably begin to differ from nation to nation, from man to man, from citizen to citizen only if they were asked “and who is to blame for such status of yours (ours)?”

One thing is certain: the ruling parties are panic-stricken. Serious political changes, even shocks have occurred and are occurring all around B&H. B&H is more alone than ever before, ripe for change, while change is another, euphemistic name for the final removal from power of all nationalistic parties who have brought us these hardest ten years. They recognise themselves best in those whose turn has come to step down and therefore can do nothing else but call “their” people to stand by them because they are supposedly the only ones who know what “their” people need and how to answer to their needs.

But, for example, that same HDZ never told its people why was their number in B&H halved, how did it happen that the Croat nation no right to 49 percent of that same B&H and why was HDZ for so long against the constitutiveness of that same Croat nation in the mentioned 49 percent of B&H, why for the last ten years the Croat people in B&H don't have their own political mind, their political representatives or TV, daily papers, museums, galleries, theatres, etc. and all other attributes of autonomy, autochthony and even statehood and constitutiveness of a nation in a political creation that is called a state, not even to the extent to which that same nation had it at the time of “odious anti-people regime”.

No one can reproach us for glorifying the past, but how else can one explain the fact that today, at the time when “our”, moreover “democratic” party is in power, the Croats have even less than they used to have ten years ago. The only way it can be explained is to admit that they gave us ten hardest years during which, carrying the national flags and boasting of their people and their interests, their only concern was how to get rich and what to plunder.

It seems that it took a long time for the B&H HDZ to realise (if it realised at all) that it could be an autochthonous political force of Bosnia and Herzegovina and ask the people what they want and not to force upon them the will which one of its immature political leaders has picked up somewhere in Zagreb. However, if HDZ B&H has realised something after “the case of HDZ in Zagreb” and the death of “the beloved leader”, then it came too late and, methodologically speaking, was incorrect. Even if it were justified today, because of, for example, bad constitutional-legal position of Croats in relation to other two nations without HDZ not being in the least responsible for that, referendum as the most democratic expression of the popular will, primarily points that it is high time for HDZ to step down from the political stage.

Namely, a party which purports to express the majority political will of a nation and is still a ruling party of that nation, but calls to its aid all political parties with Croat attributes and the entire Croat nation in B&H, thereby shows that it is weak, powerless, immature and incompetent to fight for the interests of that nation in power structures in which the will of the voters, i.e. its own people, is expressed. And if that party is weak, the question this party should resolve within its own ranks without again and again burdening the people with its failures, which did not deserve that although it is not totally without blame for that failure, is: how did that happen and what consequences it should suffer.

It is quite another thing how did it come to pass that HDZ, which complains of the inequitable status of Croats in B&H and primarily in B&H Federation, for which the only other guilty party can be its coalition partner SDA, is calling the people to referendum in order to show (to whom?) that the Croats are really inequitable (with whom?). Wouldn't it be logical for it to be solving that problem with its coalition partner SDA? Yes! But, then it would be hard to explain, for example, why did HDZ enter a coalition with SDA in Vares communal authorities as then it would have to complain (to whom?) that Croat children are second-class pupils in Vares?! Just like, when Dzemaludin Latic, a prominent SDA member, after accusing a SDS member Velibor Ostojic of having kicked Moslem heads around streets of Foca, nominated him for the assembly human rights commission! Even the immortal Ripley with his famous column “Believe It or Not” would be shocked at this level of cynicism of the ruling structures towards their own people and own voters in whose name they allegedly want to rule again!

It is still unknown what would the HDZ's question at the referendum exactly be, although it is known when will it be held - on the day of the elections, December 11. Only a negative political stand of the international community in B&H might spoil this plan, because it doesn't know who and in which way (with what political means and before which authorities) could resolve any request of the Croatian people in B&H expressed at a referendum. Such HDZ's political intervention, if it ever materialises and even under the most favourable political conditions, would be a popular mass-scale expression of support which would probably also be the last Balkan populist happening in this century and millennium from which, in contrast to Serbia, no formal-legal consequences would result either for B&H Federation or B&H, i.e. or for the people in whose name it was organised.

We believe that HDZ itself would neither profit from something like this! However, to all those who know how to read the political rhetoric of the ruling parties in B&H, the very idea on a referendum leads to the conclusion that the political arrogance of the ruling party of the Croats has been exhausted and that with the pretended openness for all other options it is only trying to hide its fear of the inevitable.

Zeljko IVANKOVIC

(AIM Sarajevo)