Friend Dodik answered friend Covic: neither does Herzeg-Bosnia have a president. We cannot defend Covic because Herzeg-Bosnia is not an administrative unit, but we cannot help but ask, is Dodik’s message a signal of the disunity of SNSD and HDZ, or just a political play?
However, the real unity is Serbian. And how does it look under the direction of Milorad Dodik and Aleksandar Vucic, while one does not recognize the institutions of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), and the other its sovereignty? Are we watching on the scene the tying of flags like in the ’90s, which was a prelude to war destruction, and aggression? Do both of them use national symbols to maintain political power, under the guise of celebrating the holiday of Serbian unity, freedom, and the national flag?
One people, one state, one leader, one flag and coat of arms, one anthem – the Serbian variant of the state, without the Drina as a border.
“In this century, we should gather around the idea: one people, one Serbian state,” said Milorad Dodik, president of SNSD.
At work is the implementation of the conclusions of the All-Serbian Assembly, tied tricolors as a sign of demonstration of what the two regimes aspire to. An autocrat and a convict as the measure of Serbianness and patriotism, by which the people and sanctions happen, celebrate a version of Greater Serbia.
Rhetoric of the nineties again on the scene
“What farce, about all-Serbian unity, are we talking about when in the Republic of Serbia for nine months fierce demonstrations have been going on against the ruling regime, where it is brother against brother, father against son, meaning Serb against Serb. And we are talking about all-Serbian unity. Imagine what all that unity would look like if Vucic carried it out in BiH or in Montenegro,” says Dragan Stevanovic, president of the Managing Board of the Serbian Civic Council of BiH.
“Dodik, with the announcement of a referendum on self-determination, which he will realize or not, remains to be seen, in essence, is trying to bring to an end those commitments that he and Vucic set when adopting conclusions about the ‘Serbian world’,” points out Miro Lazovic, former president of the Assembly of the Republic of BiH.
Lazovic further adds that, as someone who has long been on the political scene, “he wants to believe that nothing will come of it and that BiH will overcome both its internal and external opponents in a way that the ‘Serbian world’ will also remain only on paper.”
Vucic’s calculation
The right to a common state is the goal they are striving for, and the day of Serbian unity is the tool for nationalist mobilization and an attempt to create a new situation on the ground in the midst of Dodik’s campaign for a referendum on the independence of Republika Srpska (RS), wrapped in the tricolor of another, and not his own state. With Vucic’s support, as in the ’90s, and propaganda about the endangerment of Serbianness.
“That is an ideological narrative which, for its realization, awaits more favorable historical circumstances. Will that be in 50, 100, or 150 years? We know that it is a mythological consciousness, a mythological structure, that does not change – only the actors change. That is why I often say – Dodik is only the contractor of that project,” emphasized Sacir Filandra, professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo.
Stevanovic says that it is a political farce that Aleksandar Vucic needs.
“He needs it not because of the Serbs in BiH, but because of his few supporters in the Republic of Serbia, in order to demonstrate statesmanlike politics and power. As for Milorad Dodik, I no longer comment on him; he is a former politician, a current citizen who is still waiting for his court epilogue, and that is how it will end,” he concludes.
Hidden behind the story of togetherness, they have also created a parahistory in which war criminals are heroes, and the entity a state, which Vucic has entered in his ledger. The map drawers, festively and against the Constitution of BiH, looking into the past and a condemned ideology, are trying to create the future according to the same principle, without other peoples, Federalna writes.
