A few days ago, Miroslav Skoro resigned from the position of president of the Homeland Movement party (Domovinski pokret) in Croatia, thus leaving this party, which was announced as a refreshment on the Croatian political scene, without a single sounding name.
Analysts expected such a move by Skoro after another election fiasco, this time in the elections for the mayor of Zagreb, so in their opinion, the Homeland Movement will go even further right with this Skoro move (if it is even possible) and consequently become an extremely marginal party in thatcountry. But let’s leave aside the Homeland Movement and the situation in the political sky of Croatia, where the situation with the establishment of new parties as derivatives or side effects of existing ones is far from idyllic, but compared to the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), we can freely say it is fabulous.
Namely, when it comes to our country, almost at regular intervals, new political options are emerging, which are being offered to the BiH electorate as a “refreshment”, although they are most often created by dropping out and then uniting the cadres of major political parties, and very rarely do they have anything revolutionary in their political performance. It is needless to talk about an authentic political program. It seems that the only ambition of the representatives of such political projects is to seize any position in government, even a place in one of the many parliaments and assemblies in BiH.
They do not cross the electoral threshold
To be honest, there have been some attempts to move away from the established left-center-right frameworks, so over time theleft-wing political sky in BiH, with the dominant SDP and Our Party, was “enriched” by various other civic, liberal, and not to mention “green” political options, such as the Liberal Democratic Party, the Civic Democratic Party, the European Ecological Party, the Eco-Freedom Movement (ESPo) and many others. You’ve never heard of them? Don’t blame yourself because almost none of these parties typically ever cross the electoral threshold.
On the other hand, regarding the right-wing parties, the political scene was also fragmented, so in addition to the dominant parties such as SDA, HDZ, and SNSD, we also got various “right” options such as the Croatian Party of Rights, the Croatian Christian Democratic Union, Serbian Radical Party, United Srpska, or newly established Bosnian People’s Party – Religion, People, State. In this case, too, these are parties that are regularly at the very bottom of the electoral scale.
Freshness and authenticity
This is perhaps most noticeable when we look at parties that, at least in principle, declare themselves to be parties of the political center. Parties such as the Democratic Front, the People and Justice, the Party for BiH, or the Union for a Better Future of BiH were formed by the dissolution of SDA and SDP cadres, so the question arises how much freshness and authenticity in their political performance they can offer given the understaffing. In parallel with them, on BiH political scene there are dozens of other marginal political options on the political scene that do not even know whether they are left, right, or central, so they most often oscillate in the interspace without any concrete idea and whose reason for existence is purely larpurlartistic.
In this political frenzy, where some are sometimes left, and thenright, at one point are lower-ranking cadres of one party, and at another the presidents of another party, it should come as no surprise that, even though the parties in power change, individuals who hold that power remain the same. Calls for so-called “enlargement” are nothing more than a struggle to bring individuals who carry a large number of votes into their own ranks. Because it is important to get votes and they are ready to promise everything for that. Fulfilling some of those promises – well that’s another story.
Finally, the situation in BiH political sky is perhaps best described by the lyrics of the song “Streets” (Ulice) by the famous Sarajevo band “Letu stuke”. The lyrics are intended as a critique of the growing number of talent show shows and the hyper-production of ”stars”, but they can undoubtedly be applied in this case as well.
“It’s not all sad, we also have entertainers. A new elite, new talents, singers. They appear like mushrooms, it’s a euphoric sight. I sail through the smoke and I don’t turn on the TV.”, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
