The following is a guest post by Obrad Kesic, director of the RS Office for Cooperation, Trade and Investment in Washington, DC*
As someone who has been involved in elections in the United States since I was a senior in high school in Northwest Indiana, and as someone who has worked on election campaigns in five countries, I can confirm that elections can be very confusing. The current election campaign in Bosnia-Herzegovina and especially in both entities is perhaps the most confusing. Mostly because it is very difficult for many voters to understand who is actually a candidate and who is pretending to be one.
That is why I have decided to clarify the most difficult and complicated misunderstanding behind the confusion of many voters in the RS and throughout the rest of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Let me be very clear from the start, the opinions expressed here are done in the form of a classic “op-ed” and not in, the recently most popular form (especially dear to American diplomats) of a blog.
Charge d’Affaires of the American Embassy Nicholas Hill and his colleagues David Barth and Scott Miller are not candidates for any elected office in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Republika Srpska or in the Federation. Neither are Valentin Inzko, or the EU’s Peter Sorenson or a handful of Ambassadors from EU member countries. I know for some, it is difficult to believe this, given their active campaigning, stump speeches, attacks on elected governing officials and politicians, as well as the media campaign that they have been orchestrating and often funding. In the spirit of the most basic of populist campaigns, typical of Balkan elections, these men have launched a campaign of demagogic sloganeering, negative attacks against targeted ruling politicians and political parties and self-righteous moralistic posturing. They have created a virtual platform designed to bring about revolutionary change, or at least a more subservient group of elected officials through the current elections.
This platform is simple but highly problematic for its arrogance, deliberate manipulation of facts and complete disregard for the memory and intelligence of Bosnia’s electorate. Here is what they say and what is true about their claims:
“The political elites in Bosnia are dishonest and corrupt” — Nobody doubts or denies the corruption in Bosnia, however it is impossible to discuss this issue without dealing with the role and responsibility of U.S. and European diplomats, as well as that of the High Representative and his staff. They have illegally changed the Dayton Agreement in many detrimental ways (especially detrimental to the entities) but none more important to the issue of corruption than their creation of judicial bodies and authorities that empowered a judicial system without democratic control of elected officials or governments; and, most importantly, without accountability to anyone other than a handful of foreign embassies. Judges and prosecutors fear the High Representative, mid-level embassy officials and their bosses more than their own governments and elected officials. As a result they are often corrupt, incompetent and often at the forefront of selective “justice” designed to please their foreign protectors.
The sincerity of the claims of these American and European diplomats on corruption would be much more believable if they had begun “sweeping in front of their own doorsteps.” For example, they could have pursued and supported investigations into the perceptions of corruption of some of their own people. They could start with Paddy Ashdown and his violation of human and civil rights without due process of 122 citizens. Or perhaps they could explain how he was able to buy a house in Bosnia under market price and then sell it at an enormous profit well over the market price common in the country at that time? Mr. Hill and his colleagues can also explain to Bosnia’s voters the American norms in avoiding conflicts of interests, like those that insure that Vice President Joseph Biden and his son Hunter Biden can mutually be involved in the Ukraine; the VP in a policy making capacity, while his son through “business” has recently financially benefitted by being named to the board of directors of Ukraine’s leading energy company. As experts on fighting nepotism and conflict of interests, perhaps they can explain this American system that functions so well in the case of Ukraine.
It is difficult to listen to someone preach about the need for “the respect of the rule of law” and of the need for honesty, when that person, himself has supported the violation of Bosnia’s laws, is violating international law and is acting dishonestly as an “honest broker” and as an “advocate of the common person.” The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations in Article 41 states:
Without prejudice to their privileges and immunities, it is the duty of all persons enjoying such privileges and immunities to respect the laws and regulations of the receiving State. They also have a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of that State.
How can someone who thumbs his or her nose at international law have any credibility to serve as an advocate for the respect of the rule of law? This type of behavior reinforces the age old ruling principles of tyrants and criminals alike, that “might makes right” and “do what I say and not as I do.”
“The political elites avoid responsibility and accountability” – Even though this is an expression that is both legitimate and true, it nonetheless is overly simplistic like most demagogic rhetoric. It once again absolves the foreign diplomats of their own responsibilities for the current mess in Bosnia and tries to transfer it completely onto the shoulders of local politicians, who even if they wanted to be more responsible were greatly hindered in this by the interventions and manipulations of the foreign political actors effectively running the state through 2008 when the High Representative lost his “absolute” authority that was illegally constructed through the so-called Bonn Powers.
It is difficult to see how Lagumdzija, Covic, Lijanovic, Niksic and Budimir are more responsible for the problems in the Federation than Inzko, former U.S. Ambassador Moon and a number of his European colleagues; all of whom conspired to violate the will of Bosnia’s voters following the 2010 elections by usurping power from the Election Commission and creating an illegal government that has been highly inefficient, corrupt and disastrous for all of Bosnia. Now, no one who bears the most responsibility for this historic error of judgment, none of the foreign actors has stepped up to take responsibility and to apologize to the citizens of the Federation and of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
When it comes to the willingness of American diplomats to accept responsibilities and to be held accountable to the rule of law, nothing shows this better than the successful lobbying of the U.S. State Department of Congress to pass legislation (2010) that gave immunity (in front of U.S. courts) to U.S. citizens serving in international missions in Bosnia and Kosovo. In other words, in addition to the diplomatic and international immunity that they enjoyed, now people like Raffi Gregorian were also given immunity from suit in domestic courts under U.S. laws.
In closing, let me say that I believe that it is unfortunate that Nick Hill and his “party of diplomats” are not actually candidates in Bosnia’s elections. Not because I believe that they are capable of doing a better job of governing Bosnia than are the country’s own political elite, but because elections would finally hold them accountable for their own actions in creating the current mess. The way things are now, they can continue to campaign and to practice electoral engineering, hoping that they can effectively manipulate and influence Bosnia’s voters into doing what they want them to do, in order to bring about the change that would better serve their own interests. They can pontificate, bully, hurl bolts of moral outrage and judgments without any fear of being held responsible and accountable themselves. Like Greek Gods on Mount Olympus, they,from their own moral high ground and protection of their diplomatic immunity and positions, enjoy playing with the fates of the peoples of Bosnia, they are morally aloof, unpredictable and totally without a sense of responsibility. However, in the end, they offer the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina little more than mythology, a mythology built upon hubris and irresponsibility.
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*The views expressed in this essay are exclusively my own and in no way reflect the position of the RS Office for Cooperation, Trade and Investment or of the RS government or of any RS elected official.
The RS Office for Cooperation, Trade and Investment is a registered instrumentality of the Government of the Republic of Srpska. Additional information is available with the Department of Justice in Washington D.C.
