Drazena PERANIC reports on 21 July, 1998 for "AIM" from Sarajevo on the recent agreement of Bosnian opposition parties in Brussels.

The opposition is doing everything just in order to come to power." This is the most frequent accusation addressed by the ruling party at its opponents ever since the establishment of the multi-party system in the country. There is the inevitable dose of self-pity in it - because if the opposition is fighting for something so wicked as power, it means that those who have it are nothing but victims of such a difficult trade. And all that for the sake of our common well-being...

But, with the Brussels Protocol, the opposition will finally make it clear to the regime that struggle for power and the attempt to replace it is quite
a normal thing which in a democratic environment can never be labelled as
the "lack of patriotism." On the contrary, such a struggle is an imperative
for the opposition, especially in a country where results of several-year
rule of one and the same political party are more than crushing. On the
other hand, the unfortunate victim, i.e. the authorities, will reply to the
opposition appalled, something like - 'you should be ashamed of yourself'!
Especially because the message was sent, among other, by opposition leaders
who were during the war inclined to the concept of Izetbegovic's Party of
Democratic Action.

Last week, at the main headquarters of NATO in
Brussels, leaders of the opposition parties, Zlatko Lagumdzija (SDP), Selim
Beslagic (Social Democrats), Stjepan Kljuic (Republicans), Muhamed Filipovic
(LBO), Ivo Komsic (HSS), Adil Zulfikarpasic (MBO), Kasim Vejzagic (SPP), and
the president of the Serb Civil Council Mirko Pejanovic met with Secretary
General of NATO Javier Solana, supreme commander of ally forces Wesley
Clark, and ambassadors and heads of missions of member countries of the
North Atlantic alliance and Partnership for Peace.

Signatories of the Protocol bound themselves not to attack
each other, to exchange information and coordinate their preelection
activities, to form a joint secretariat for exchange of information,
coordination and expert communication with representatives of the
international community during the preelection process. By publicly
declaring themselves against the ruling political structures in B&H, leaders
of the North-Atlantic alliance made it clear that they still consider the
idea of replacing national oligarchies which was first made public in
Westendorp's attempts to unite Social Democrats, to be the optimum solution
or establishment of stable peace and democratization of B&H.

Apart from the defined goal characteristic of every opposition and support
of the West, the greatest value of the signed document is the fact that
after the SDP B&H stepped out of the Associated List '96, it gathered again
parties of the former coalition in an institutionalized form of the
protocol, and that the comeback of Lagumdzija's Social Democrats is the most
powerful reinforcement of the democratic alternative and of its advantage in
togetherness.

Of course, the authorities in Sarajevo immediately expressed discontent with
the Brussels Protocol, and the fact that Alija Izetbegovic, president of the
ruling party, in person, took upon himself to criticize the agreement of the
opposition and the Euro-Atlantic institution is the best illustration of the
nervousness caused by the successful Brussels meeting inside the Party of
Democratic Action. Izetbegovic's sudden belief in his forces and the lament that "our people do not like foreigners who appoint the authorities in B&H", could perhaps be understood as a sincere reflection of the retired lawyer if he had not been a politician who had until recently believed that NATO operations in B&H were indispensable, who signed the peace accords prepared in laboratories of the very same countries of the West, who has survived at the head of the Presidency of united B&H only thanks to the engagement of the West and not his own, and whose slogan in the last elections was the self-satisfied boast: "We are supported both by the East and the West." This time in B&H, the agile West is publicly supporting a different political option, since use of force in this space is linked to the rule of the current regime, not the opposition.


Source: "AIM" news pool, July 21, 1998