Struggling for a decent life in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Interview with EMIN EMINAGIC - by IVAN BONNIN (@ivnbkn)

First of all, we are very interested in discussing the social and technical composition of the mobilizations: in addition to the factory workers who ignited the mobilizations, how big and significant has been (and is) the participation of the jobless/precarious youth, of students and knowledge workers, of unemployed and unpaid care workers, of pensioners and elderly?

The main social forces behind the protests were all the workers who were left on the streets after they lost their companies, they were accompanied by the outraged unemployed youth of the country along with students, activists, academics and ordinary people. In the initial protest in Tuzla no one made an effort to stand above the crowd and to take a "leading role". There were some minor groups articulating some fragmented demands, but what really unified the protesters was the proclamation of the Plenum of the Workers and Citizens of Tuzla, on Sunday, February 9, 2014, which called for the, and I am citing, following:

1. That the authorities of Tuzla Canton, in accordance with the Constitution and the Law, ensure the safety of all protest participants;

2. That the Assembly of the Tuzla Canton, in accordance with its constitutional obligations, immediately ensures a functioning government in the Tuzla Canton, excluding the government in resignation;

3. That the Assembly of the Tuzla Canton, in cooperation with the Plenum names an expert government made up of capable and nonpartisan and uncompromised members, no later than March 1, 2014.
After Tuzla, Sarajevo started to follow suit and organized a Plenum as well along with other cities in the country, the demands of all of them are quite similar to each other. A fact that this has found approval by the people is that the plenums are growing in numbers day after day, in Tuzla, when it started on Friday (unofficially) there were about 50 people, today (February 13), the venue was changed to the great hall of the Bosnian Cultural Center in Tuzla, in order to accommodate the growing number of people joining the discussion. Coming back to the constituencies of these protests, certainly a huge number of unemployed, or precariously employed youth, as well as the elderly, but also university students who are realizing that the situation the way it is now will not yield in a secured existence for them after obtaining their degrees. Now in the workgroups the plenum has formed, we can se a wide range of people from factory workers, over retirees to university graduates and students coming together in formulating new solutions for a better future for all of them.

Is this protest, as according to reports, really managing to go beyond ethnonationalist segmentations and tribal/localist rivalries? Or is it still early to say it and may we expect a nationalist backlash during next developments? Is it likeley to viralize outside Bosnia and across the Balkans?

It is safe to assume that these protests have finally managed to breakthrough the ethno-nationalist fragmentation of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian society. Of course the partisan media (which is almost all the media in the country) are trying to spin the stories on the protests, on one side in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by invoking sentiments of the war in the 1990s, saying that the protesters “resembled the agressors” the current elites “were” fighting during the war. On the other side, in the Serb Republic, the media considers these protests as a conspiracy against the Serbs. But by the uprising we are witnessing, and which is growing day after day, people are simply not buying into these stories. Evidence for this are the plenums, which are growing day by day, for example in Tuzla it started with some 30 people, by last Friday, the number grew to 700, and they managed to achieve a victory in successfully pressing the government to abolish the “white-bread” payment (this is a severance package given to delegates after they finish their term, which consists in a year's worth of sallaries), and in this way managing to save over 1.5 million KM (which amounts to about 130 pension payments).  We now are witnessing solidarity protests going on all over Bosnia and Herzegovina, in cities like Bihać, Sarajevo, Mostar, Travnik, even Trebinje (which is in the Serb Republic), but we also see solidarity protests taking place in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro and the other former Yugoslav republics. People are identifying with the protesters here, and defining their goals under the same framework, as well as identifying the culprits, i.e. the political elites for their predicament.

In any case, what you think is the reason of this (may it apparent or real) step forward? Is it correct to say that political economy's deepening contradictions are finally crushing culturalist dispositives of division and control - such as ethnonationalism and/or religion are - of the population?

It for sure is a step forward for this society, as people are finally waking up from the dream of the transition, and I say dream here referring to the late comedian George Carlin who says something similar about the “American Dream”, that, and I cite “You have to be asleep to believe it”. Obviously, after the wars people were promised a prosperous life in a democratic society, free to exercise their right to national self-determination, and for over two decades people have been deceived by this, and were given something completely opposite, they were constantly being told that they are always under threat, and that they were always alone in whatever they did. But ever since the protests started people are starting to rediscover the long lost solidarity among them, but not only this, through the plenums, people are finally reclaiming the language that was taken away from them, with which they now can articulate their anger and their discontent, and give voice to their concerns, for being robbed for over two decades. The plenums are a place without restriction, where people care less and less about nationality, ethnicity or religion, but start caring for each other, and start working towards a better tomorrow for all of us.

From an external perspective, we seem to understand that the two main issues/instances arising from the revolts are: socio-economic injustice and corruption. Can you confirm it? Do you also interpret, as we do, the population's claims to eliminate, or at least to reduce, the privileges of politicians as a form of rebellion/counter-attack to the evident (and quite provoking) overlapping of these two dynamics – socio-economic injustice and corruption – during this contemporary phase of permanent crisis and severe material hardship?

Yes most certainly, and you can see that in the demands the plenums are proclaiming almost every day, some of which I cited. We are not, yet at least, dealing with a great anti-capitalist discourse which seeks to abolish the current socio-economic order, but rather, some quick, reasonable, and quite feasible demands people, which are not that hard to acomplish in a country like Bosnia and Herzegovina. They are directing towards a government that has been depriving them of a decent life for a very long time under the guise of ethno-nationalism which was congealed by the every-day terror of a constant threat, and constant vigilance towards war. So again in answer to your question, yes, people are actually fighting for a more just society rid of corruption and rid of an elite that will take everything for themselves while leaving almost nothing to the rest of the people. 

Who is the main target of population's anger? Is it the political class as a whole as street slogans recite, including the social-democrat party SDP co-responsible for the disastrous privatization processes severly affecting workers wealth?

As I said before, the targets are the political elites, who are not only in government, but also control large chunks of the private sector, and are tied in with de facto criminals. The Social Democratic Party under the leadership of Zlatko Lagumdžija, and we have to be perfectly clear about this, in economic terms, kept pushing for the worst kinds of neoliberal reforms, Brussles and the US have been imposing on the country. they however were not alone in this, they certainly were accompanied by their nationalist counterparts, but with stressing that the “country serves the people” (prim. Transl. “država za čovjeka”) introducing another I would say, even much lighter nationalist imaginary, the one of the “Bosnian-Herzegovinian Citizen”. Coming back to workers and, representing workers interests, we have to remember that the majority government in Tuzla for the past 10 years, ever since these privatizations have been going on, never even once attempted to help the workers of the failed companies (such as Dita, Konjuh, Polihem, Resod-Guming, etc.), and this was not only the case in Tuzla, but also in the rest of the country with all the privatized companies, so of course the workers felt abandoned and left to their own devices if their livelyhood was being taken away piece by piece.

There seems to be a sort of resentment towards the foreign powers who brokered the "peace deal" in Dayton (the US on top), and towards the European Union, too. Why? Do you think people resent their collusion (especially economical) with local ethnonationalist elites?

Many academics who study Bosnia and Herzegovina, when asked how do you define political action here, they will refer to the old Leninist notion, that no political action is possible without a leading figure. I for one do not agree with this notion at all in the light of what is going on in the last few days, but as peace (and by peace I mean people stopped shooting at each other, and not in the real sense of the word, where people would be given a decent life), was created by foreign powers, sentiments existed that these foreign powers are the ones to turn to in times of crisis. But as time progressed in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the end of the war, whenever people would turn to the High Representative for example, their concerns would fall on deaf ears. So people lost trust in them, and rightly so, and if we look on how they are dealing with the situation right now, it becomes even more evident. The High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Valentin Inzko, in an interview he gave a couple of days ago said that a possible way to contain the situation would be through an intervention of the EUFOR, adding to that, that all the Austrian companies in the country were doing fine and taking no damage in the protests. He also made a remark to the alleged burning of the historic archive in the Presidency, which we later found out took way less damage than the media reported, that this was an auto-attack on Bosnia and Herzegovina's cultural heritage, disregarding what the people on the protests were actually fighting for.

How is the EU, more specifically, perceived by the people in the streets?Which kind of role is it playing in the geopolitical context of the Balkans?

I think my last answer covered this already, but I have to say, if we look at recent developments, regarding to the remarks Inzko gave, which included the possibility of mobilizing military, as well as the Turkish government's attempt to “stabilize” the situation by sending in Davutoglu to help handle the protests, there now is great contempt for the EU among the protesters. If we look at this situation it seems completely surreal, like we have gone back to the 19th century, where you have the Austrian-Hungarian Empire on one side, and the Ottomans on the other, fighting over this piece of land, disregarding the suffering and the injustice the people are enduring day after day, and the people only represent collateral damage, with no real help coming from them, but having two overtly imperialist powers fighting for their share.