Author, professor: Leaders of Bosnia's three main ethnic parties need each other

The two said that there are no true differences between the leaders of the three strongest ethnicity-oriented parties - Bakir Izetbegovic, from the Bosniak Party for Democratic Action (SDA), Milorad Dodik, from the Serb Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) and Dragan Covic, from the Croat Democratic Union (HDZ BiH).

“There is an attempt to portray a difference - that Covic and Dodik are one thing, while Izetbegovic’s policy is another. This is all the same policy, but with differing approaches,” Kukic said.

“None of them can fall here. If one of them is down, the entire concept fails. The other two will keep him up,” Dizdarevic added.

The two spoke about the ongoing trend among politicians to keep talking about who did what during the 1992-1995 war and boasting about their patriotism.

“What is patriotism? If you look at ethnonationalists, all of them present themselves as patriots,” Kukic said, adding that “patriotism is the first step toward chauvinism and hatred towards others and those who are different.”

Dizdarevic said that this concept is part of the politics in the country and that populism has overshadowed everything else in Bosnia.

“How someone may understand patriotism and how it is being portrayed is not the problem. How is it possible that we don’t see the background there, who organises what, who profits and who protects whom?” he said.

“Everything is possible, even for a man who spent the entire war in a safe to talk about guns,” he said, referring to Izetbegovic.

“The answer to that is - so what? We have destroyed all possible principles, institutions, laws, and I don’t see that it is possible to argue or deny anything with any argumentation here. We live in a post-fact society, where fake news has become legalised,” he said.