On Saturday, the most important trial in several years in our country started in front of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), and it was against an organized group that, in the most difficult moments of the pandemic, spent 10.5 million BAM for the purchase of 100 Chinese respirators, none of which have been put into operation.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH, the head of this group was the Prime Minister of the Federation of BiH (FBiH), Fadil Novalic.
Of course, the principle of the presumption of innocence must be respected here, that is, it must not be claimed that anyone is guilty before the final judgment of the court, Klix.ba writes.
However, the question that the public has the right to ask is whether Novalic, who is the “first operative” of the FBiH, will be able to do his job properly under the pressure of this difficult court process.
There is no doubt that trials, which will last for months or years, as well as preparations for hearings, consultations with lawyers, and the stress of a possible verdict, will affect Novalic as well as any other man in this position.
At the same time, the Federation, as well as the whole of BiH, are going through perhaps the biggest crisis in the last twenty years, so we need leaders who can dedicate all their time, strength, and creativity to solving many problems we face.
Let’s just mention an example of the vaccination process. In BiH, it has not started yet, although tens of millions of people have already been vaccinated throughout the world. Delays in vaccination in our country will lead to the loss of an additional number of lives.
Our politicians have only recently realized that it is not enough to just order vaccines through the joint global COVAX mechanism, but that there are also other methods, such as direct negotiations with manufacturers, lobbying, etc., all that other countries, like Serbia, have been doing for a long time now, and therefore they have already come a long way with vaccination.
One of the most important issues is the economic crisis as well. Economy of BiH which has been weak before has been severely shaken by the coronavirus pandemic. Exports fell by about a billion BAM last year, and about 15.000 people lost their jobs.
The International Monetary Fund predicts that BiH will not return to the level of 2019 in terms of economic strength in 2021 (at best, it will happen in 2022), while the World Bank has assumed that there will be the growth of poverty in our country.
Despite all of this, there are numerous criticisms that the authorities have not done enough to help the economy and its citizens whose standard has dropped significantly.
