Conflict of Small Differences

Session of the Assembly of Republica Srpska

The latest session of the parliament of Republica Srpska showed that absolute majority in it is held by the coalition of members of the SDS and former members of the SDS.

AIM Banja Luka, 16 May, 1998

Postponed for a few times, the latest session of the Assembly of Republica Srpska ended in the manner of a comedy del arte: plenty of strong words, even more combinations, and in the end - everybody was satisfied. Deputies of the quarrelling Serb blocks, who were at one moment even invited by Momcilo Krajisnik to national reconciliation, dispersed after three days of exchange of insults with similar emotions: we really thrashed them. Of course, the long postponement of the session was motivated by reasons of thrashing: it was necessary to wait for the assembly session until the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) promised that, together with the Radicals and four rented deputies from other parties, it would not pass a vote of inconfidence to the cabinet of Milorad Dodik, while the ruling coalition (SNS-SPRS-SNSD) decided that it was more worthwhile for it to hear the report of Momcilo Krajisnik about the work of the Presidency of B&H than to demand his recall. Only decision-making about the agenda lasted one third of the total working hours, which was promising to ensure good entertainment to lovers of political pyrotechnics on the very first day.

DODIK IN THE MANNER OF THE SDS: First, prime minister Milorad Dodik submitted the report about the hundred days of his government. After having described the situation in the country, with plenty of talent for horror as a genre, which he had come upon with his cabinet (international pressure, chaos, split, catastrophic economic and social situation, shattered information system, people in apathy, crime), Dodik said that the new government "managed to achieve the four main goals it had set to itself for the first hundred days": united RS, implementation of the Dayton accords, fighting against crime and attracting money from abroad. And then, havoc started in which deputies of the SDS and the Radicals showed that if they could not send the prime minister away, at least they could use the available time to remind the people, who had already started to forget them, of the vocabulary which had brought them to power, but which had also forced them to step down from power. There were speeches about about treason, collaboration, national interests, God, lost souls and similar. Then Dodik once again proved that the only way to fight against the SDS was by using its means, and said that RS was for seven years ruled by retarded persons.

Perhaps because this struck home, Momcilo Krajisnik took the floor and manifested his courage by trying to put oil on troubled waters although the Constitution does not oblige him to bother with the deputies, and logically just made them flare up. This just proved to the uninformed waht principle Krajisnik based his rule of the Serb assembly for years turning it into a "workers' council" with his capability to act slightly more reasonably than the reasonable ones and at least slightly more fiercely than the fierce ones.

KRAJISNIK IN THE MUSEUM: It was clear already by that time that the deputies of both parties had come to Banja Luka to begin the election campaign at this joint gathering and convince - each other, but also themselves - that they have murderous weapons at their disposal. Krajisnik read his report the next day and just as deputies of the SDS and the Radicals were right when they claimed that Dodik's speech was not a report on the work of the government but its operation program, Krajisnik did not speak about his work but gave Dodik a dressing down again who was, he said, not only interfering with his job, but also corrupted it. This was the opportunity which showed that in the parliament of RS absolute majority was held by the mental coalition of the members of SDS and former members of the SDS: it was suggested to Krajisnik to return to the World Museum in Sarajevo, but not as the president of the Presidency, but as an exhibit accused of unstabling and splitting the state, of being the boss of Serb crime...

Of course, both Dodik and Krajisnik have remained where they were, and the deputies of all parties showed that they were ready for election insults and imputations. Judging by the rhetoric which prevailed at the first pre-election assembly session, another fatal elections are awaiting RS in September (as if any had not been fatal). Although none of the parties left the session with the feeling of having been defeated, the global impression about the work of the assembly is more than bad. Deputies of both Serb blocks, except for a few honourable exceptions who by all means tried to prove to great fans of three-day assembly TV live coverage (for the sake of which the whole happening was organised) that they had nothing in common with the others, had created just the contrary effect. Upset and confused people were left with the impression that both the ones and the others were equally loud, equally nervous and equally uncivil, and that the fact that they represented different political platforms was the least problem, because the elections here are not a matter of choice of political platforms for a long time already.

INCREASING THE NUMBER OF ABSTAINERS: By rhetoric in which words like "crime" and "collaboration" should have values of manifestos, deputies of both parties do not seem to realize that RS has enetered a fragile postwar and precivil era which demands from the persons on the political scene primarily a profound change of the political discourse. In analogy to that, until the elections, the question will remain open whether RS has realised after this session of the assembly that it has entered this era in which there is less killing, robbery and starvation thanks least of all to the will and skill of the current assembly and its deputies.

That is why it seems unbelievable that either those in the Pale and in the Banja Luka block have actually believed that after three days of futile squabbling from the assembly platform, they have attracted any voters. It is more likely that this session will increase the trend of growth of the number of election abstainers among the Serbs, which might spread to include 35 per cent of the electorate. What is surprising is that the past assembly session showed that none of the Serb parties seriously took into account this category of the population - which is characterised by the lack of hope and confidence and which has the sentence of Ivo Andric's Mustafa Madzar that the world was "full of repulsive things" as its motto. The assembly rhetoric showed that the parties would again persist on the following principle towards the voters: first you raise their temperature (with stories about crime or treason, it is all the same), and then when they are excited and half frantic, they stick on ballots like flies. The voters who cannot be attracted by raising an uproar are still waiting: they cannot be attracted by the SDS and the Radicals by anything but the question where their money, their houses and friends are, they are driven back by Dodik because he is increasingly starting to resemble a rich uncle from America who has returned with a bag full of money and who is making promises to everybody but not actually giving it to anybody, long memory is driving them away from the party officials of the SNS, and the short leash from Belgrade turns them away from the Socialists.

The worst thing for RS will be if the people who will come to the polls in September start to believe that all the parties are alike. Of course, it will never be true, but by opening the election campaign at the last session of the parliament a month and a half before its formal beginning, the deputies of RS certainly did their best to make it look that way.

Zeljko Cvijanovic