Officially, the pre-election campaign has not started, but the ruling parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) made an effort to fight as much as possible, and not to do their job within the institutions where they have mandates. They blame each other for all the problems. This is how one gets the impression that there is actually no talk of bad or almost no engagement that would make life easier for citizens during the greatest economic crisis.
This is everyday life in BiH, regardless of whether it is an election year or not. Mutual accusations, fights, and so on for the last almost 30 years, without anyone dealing with the citizens’ existential issues. The minimum wage of 550-600 BAM at a time when 400-gram bread is one and a half BAM and butter is nine BAM, no one particularly cares. A rational answer to the question “Why do citizens tolerate this” is difficult to find and it is similar to the Stockholm syndrome – the worse it is, the better it is, says professor Smiljana Vovna. The solution lies in the abstinence of those who do not vote.
”It is obvious that they do not think about their existential questions. It is impossible for a man to be happy if he is hungry, and that it’s more important to him what his name is and what tribe he belongs to,” says sociologist Smiljana Vovna.
While belonging to a tribe is obviously more important, the Federation, for example, records the highest inflation in the last 22 years – 17.6 percent.
”When there is a recession, then expenditures increase. When there is inflation, it must be reduced. This is an elementary textbook approach to the problem. In BiH, the situation is such that expenditures increase. And for what? They increase, not to improve the social position of pensioners and people in a state of social need, but to increase the salaries of politicians. This is what politics has done regarding inflation,” economist Vjekoslav Domljan points out.
Gas, electricity, groceries, prices, and global supply disruptions are something we cannot influence, says a professor at the Faculty of Economics in Sarajevo Aziz Sunje, but we can certainly improve the business environment, encourage businesses, and reform companies.
When it comes to helping the citizens, the politicians obviously did not reach for more than a one-time aid of 100 BAM in both entities. In July, the trade union consumer basket amounted to more than two thousand and 600 BAM. An amount that with this pace of power will never be reachable to the average resident, BHRT writes.
E.Dz.
