SURVIVING THE PEACE The Struggle for Postwar Recovery in Bosnia-Herzegovina

home  ♦  about the blog ♦ the book ♦ the author ♦ buy the book  ♦  contact

December 7, 2020
Scandal #2 in the High Judicial & Prosecutorial Council; Review of the November 15 elections

There's more news than usual this month. This has not only to do with the municipal elections that were held on November 15; there's also a brand new scandal in the judiciary system, and there are rare signs of life from the OHR. I'll start with the judiciary.

You might remember that there was a scandal involving the president of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC) last year (see my report here). The HJPC is an independent body whose responsibility is to supervise the functioning of Bosnia's judicial system, to raise its standards and improve the rule of law, and to appoint and supervise competent judges and prosecutors at all levels.

The president of the HJPC is Milan Tegeltija, a collaborator of Milorad Dodik. Early last year he was caught on film promising to intervene in a case brought by a businessman from Velika Kladuša named Nermin Alešević who, fed up with interminable delays, took it upon himself to document Tegeltija's receipt of a bribe and his promise to meddle in a judicial process that was not within his purview. The resulting leaked video evidence should have, at the very least, forced Tegeltija's resignation. Instead, he received a unanimous vote of confidence from the rest of the HJPC—and Alešević has recently been indicted for illegal filming, with Tegeltija called as a witness!

As I am too often tempted to say, this is Bosnia. Now, more than a year and a half after Tegeltija was caught in one act of corruption, another video has been released, this time anonymously, showing him preparing another illicit intervention. In the recent film, Tegeltija is seen scheming with a colleague, Miljana Buha. Buha asks Tegeltija to intervene on behalf of her sister Sanja Čegar, who wishes to be employed as a judge in Banja Luka. Tegeltija responds by admonishing Buha that Čegar should not be so ambitious, and should aim—temporarily—for an appointment in another town. His concern is that an appointment for Čegar in the RS capital would be too obvious an intervention on his part, and would thus get him (Tegeltija) and Buha both in trouble.

In the film, Tegeltija says to Buha, "It is much easier to enter another court. Think about it. Are you going to endanger yourself now? Do you understand me? Look at one thing, if Sanja is applying for the court in Banja Luka, where the competition is huge, everyone will know that she is your sister, right? And that will definitely go to the media. And what will happen then? They will ask you to resign...Well, if a position is opened somewhere, like Gradiška, Prijedor, [randomly employs a crude anatomical curse] and so on, what does it cost for her to be there for a year and then move here later?...We just have to be smart and play it tactically."

So the president of the HJPC, the most powerful judiciary appointment and oversight body in Bosnia, is seen behaving like a small-time local mafioso. There should be no surprise here, since we've known for a generation that this is how the mechanisms of power are operated in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Now it remains to be seen whether the present scandal will have any more repercussions than the previous one.

There are indications that it may. That is, the entire weight of the international community is coming down on the side of judicial reform. The OHR, USAID, EU, OSCE, and the US Embassy, among others, have all weighed in in just the last couple of weeks. In part the timing is a coincidence, because the OSCE's third annual report on the state of the Bosnian judiciary came out on November 23, before the recent scandal flick was released (see it here). The report aptly calls the judiciary situation the "Impunity Syndrome."

The OSCE's reports on the judiciary from the two previous years were ignored in Bosnia. And other reports on accomplishments of the judiciary point out that between 2017 and 2019 prosecution of corruption cases dropped by two-thirds—and the conviction rate dropped from 100% to 12% in that period. This should not be interpreted to mean that corruption in Bosnia was on the wane.

Meanwhile, the corruption watchdog Transparency International reported that Bosnia now ranks 101st out of 198 countries in citizens' perception of corruption. And in contrast to this fall in effectiveness, USAID reports that in the past five years, the courts and prosecutorial sectors have constantly increased staff, and their budgets have grown by 25% and 40% respectively.

High Representative Valentin Inzko has called for Milan Tegeltija's resignation, as has the Peace Implementation Council, a Dayton institution set up to oversee Bosnia-Herzegovina's functioning and progress toward reform. But Tegeltija rebuffs every negative report about the judiciary, saying, in effect, "pay attention to what I say, not what I do." In fact, in response to the recent scandal video Tegeltija has gone on the offensive, calling it a forgery and saying that Bosnia's independent intelligence agency, the OSA (Obavještajno-sigurnosna agencija or Intelligence and Security Agency) is out to get him. Tegeltija went so far as to file a two-page criminal complaint—without evidence—accusing the OSA and unnamed employees of standing behind long-running attempts to ruin his reputation and to have him unseated.

The attack on the OSA fits within a larger picture, the attempt of Dodik and Croat boss Dragan Čović to deconstruct the Bosnian state piece by piece. That would be a story for a different blog entry, but the OSA is one of the few remaining state agencies that's not been captured by one ethno-mafia or another. And pertinent to this, one prominent official has come out to defend Tegeltija thus far: Petr Ivancov, Russia's Ambassador to Bosnia. It stands to reason that Russia, as an external party interested in seeing Bosnia rendered as weak as possible, would support Dodik's man in the HJPC.

Forced to react to international pressure, the HJPC held a meeting at the beginning of this month. It settled on three conclusions: It will review the recent scandal video; it will not ask Tegeltija to resign "because nine members were in favor of his resignation and five were opposed"; and it calls on Tegeltija to consider on his own the option of resigning.

I have seen indications that the international community may be awakening gradually from its 15-odd year slumber regarding Bosnia. It is conceivable that Inzko will feel empowered to take an action more robust than issuing accurate but useless declarations about corruption.

ELECTIONS

Municipal elections were held across Bosnia-Herzegovina on November 15 (with the exception of Mostar. Elections will be held there, for the first time since 2008, on December 20). There's been a certain amount of drama, some of it still unfolding. I'll report in three sections: general update; Banja Luka; and Srebrenica.

Overall, the three leading ethno-nationalist parties: the HDZ (Croats), SNSD (Serbs) and SDA (Bosniaks) retained their dominant positions by winning the majority of municipalities in their respective areas of control. However, Dodik's SNSD lost the mayoralty in the RS capitol, Banja Luka. And Izetbegović's SDA lost the mayoralty in Sarajevo. Both of these losses have been interpreted as a manifestation of voters in the metropolis, at least, growing tired of the entrenched parties. The question is, what did they elect instead? I'll discuss Sarajevo first, and Banja Luka below.

In the four municipalities of the city of Sarajevo (Stari Grad, Novi Grad, Centar, and Novo Sarajevo), the SDA won only one: Novi Grad. The rest were won by members of the "Četvorka" (the Foursome) coalition of Narod i Pravda (NiP), the Independent List, Naša Stranka, and the SDP. Of these four, the first two are center-right spinoffs of the SDA, and the latter two are more or less leftist parties. So it's clear that this was a coalition of convenience against the SDA.

In the city, a Serb member of Naša Stranka, Srđan Mandić, won in Centar municipality. The SDA won only Novi Grad, with Novo Sarajevo and Stari Grad going to independent or NiP candidates, both of whom were formerly SDA politicians. The SDA also took the peripheral (Cantonal) and more conservative  municipalities of Vogošća, Trnovo and Hadžići, while the NiP has taken Ilidža and Ilijaš. So although people cheer that the SDA has been dumped from Sarajevo, this has been described as an "optical illusion," because the leading conservative politics (excepting those of Mandić in Centar) remain similar to before.

However, the atmosphere in Sarajevo has been described as positive because of the possibility of seeing an end to nepotism and corruption that were the hallmarks of the SDA. Whether the hopefulness borne by the electoral results will pan out remains to be seen.

On the other hand, the Left did dominate in Tuzla, as it always has, and in much of Tuzla Canton. In Zenica the independent incumbent, formerly an SDA member, defeated the SDA, and in Bihać the incumbent also defeated the SDA. In Travnik, SDA candidate Mirsad Peco won strongly, but died on election day of Covid-19. Results of that contest are, therefore, still up in the air. Runner-up HDZ asserts that its candidate, having come in second place (with about a 25% margin), should be named mayor, but this is being disputed. And in Kalesija, the SDA candidate won—by one vote. In Prijedor the long-reigning DNS was finally dumped by Dodik's SNSD candidate Dalibor Pavlović. The HDZ retained its dominance in most Croat-controlled towns, but lost a couple of mid-sized municipalities.

BANJA LUKA

The SNSD, while losing the two most populous cities of the RS (Bijeljina and Banja Luka) came out the strongest in the country, winning nearly 45 municipalities compared to the SDA's 30 or so. But the big news was Banja Luka, where for the first time in 20 years, an opposition party took the contest. The new mayor is Draško Stanivuković, whom I have introduced (as "boychik-gadfly") in previous entries including here. At 27, he's the rising star of the opposition PDP party. He gained popularity by participating prominently in the movement "Justice for David" (see my relevant reports from 2018 here and 2019 here).

The political situation in Banja Luka is in some ways similar to that of Sarajevo, as it is an entity capital with a concentration of better-educated people and youth relatively open to activism. Banja Lukans grew tired of the flagrant corruption and, especially in the case of the Justice for David movement, the brutality of the police, supported by the long-reigning SNSD. Stanivuković offered a refreshing personality who was not averse to a bit of theater and grandstanding. He was elected to the entity parliament in 2018, where he was able to use his position as a springboard.

There was celebration in the streets of Banja Luka when Stanivuković won the election. He declared, "We're ready to work hard...I call on all the best among us to work together. Politics doesn't interest me; my interest is to work on behalf of Banja Luka. The doors of my team and my doors are open." He also commented, “I build my policy on openness. Why should it be a problem if I love our people and our country while at the same time loving every other nation and human being?”

Stanivuković promised to audit all of the contracts that have recently been drawn by the city, and to investigate suspected instances of corruption. He clearly knows at least some of the right things to say, and has developed some skills as a populist politician. He even announced that he will not take a salary for his work as mayor. This is probably not hard for him. His family is one of the richest in Banja Luka; his father built a palace in the city after the war.

After the election, Dodik raged, announcing that he would examine the voter rolls and see where Stanivuković received the most support—and would then arrange for the RS Parliament to withhold investments and financial support from the city. Dodik backed off from these threats shortly after, but there is talk that Parliament may appoint a "City Manager" to take over the city, disempowering the mayor.

Stanivuković has declared that his term means an end to the corruption of politicians, and that Banja Luka shall now be "freed from the bad Godfathers." But he has his limits. In his victory speech he mentioned only the RS and Banja Luka, omitting the name of Bosnia completely. And he has denied the genocide at Srebrenica, as well as rejecting the validity of the courts at The Hague. On top of this, Stanivuković was photographed carrying a Chetnik flag in February of this year.

The analyst Dragan Bursać has commented that people in Sarajevo voted for change, but that in Banja Luka they simply voted against Dodik's regime. Bursać says that Banja Luka has moved "from a tycoon Chetnik to an original Chetnik," and that it is naïve to expect change. He asks whether Stanivuković will turn toward Sarajevo, or Belgrade. If the latter, then he "won't be anything but a little Dodik," in Bursać's words.
 
SREBRENICA

All indications are that the electoral connivers have put another Grujičić victory over on Srebrenica, but it is still up in the air—and there has been a bizarre twist.

The incumbent mayor, Mladen Grujičić, ran against Alija Tabaković, of the SDA party. Tabaković was supported by a coalition of all the Sarajevo-based (i.e., "pro-Bosnia") parties except for the SDP (Social Democratic Party). It has become traditional for all such parties to support a Bosniak candidate for mayor in order to prevent defeat by competition from the same side. In this way, Ćamil Duraković won against a divided field of Serb candidates in 2012, in spite of fraud perpetrated by the Serb side.

In 2016 the Serb parties united and fielded Grujičić, who won and became the first Serb mayor since the war, and the first to deny the genocide that took place in 1995. Widespread fraud by the Serb side helped Grujičić win, in the face of a Bosniak majority as determined by the 2013 census.

In the past, Duraković ran as an independent, but for the most part the SDA has been predominant in Srebrenica.

First results of the November 15 election showed that Grujičić had won, with 4,466 votes to Tabaković's 1,870. In further counting, Grujičić's 2,596-vote lead has narrowed to about 1200 votes. But as I described briefly in the last couple of blog entries, fraud from the Serb side started early and showed signs of extensive organization. Citizens of Serbia were illicitly gaining citizenship and voting rights in Srebrenica. Addresses in various parts of Serbia were being assigned to real Bosnian voters from Srebrenica who live abroad and, it was supposed, would not notice that their identities had been stolen.

These and other tactics continued up to the day of the election, and observers on the Bosniak side noted them and registered complaints with the CIK (Central Election Commission). The coalition for Tabaković, "Moja adresa: Srebrenica" (My address: Srebrenica) stated that at least 1,400 people on the voter rolls did not have any valid Bosnian identification. They observed dozens of people, especially in Skelani near the bridge to Serbia, coming to vote without documents. "Voters" were being bused across that bridge from Serbia, as had been promised by candidate Grujičić himself in stump speeches that he gave in that country. [Our incumbent president has shown himself capable of bizarre, unheard-of electoral shenanigans, but it's hard to imagine even him giving a campaign speech, say, in neighboring Canada or Mexico.]

The Tabaković coalition further reported that illicit voters were being provided with Bosnian identification on the day of the election. The Bosniak side expected that they would come out ahead with counting of absentee ballots from other parts of Bosnia—about 1,800 from the Federation, and another 2,400 from abroad. With these numbers, Tabaković still had a serious possibility of winning. However, it turned out that many voters who were registered abroad were simply not receiving their voting material in the mail on time, if at all. Moja adresa: Srebrenica estimated that 40% of them were without ballots as of the voting deadline.

Then, on the first day of this month, the shocking news came out that SIPA (the State Investigation and Protection Agency, like our FBI) had arrested three members of the Srebrenica branch of the SDP, including the president of the party Bego Bektić. They were charged with an assortment of criminal offenses including forgery, "unauthorized use of personal data," and "violation of suffrage," all of which boils down to registering unsuspecting, absentee Bosniaks at addresses in Serbia. Then, people at those addresses received ballots that they could fill out in the names of those absent Bosniaks, marking their votes for Grujičić.

This kind of operation was already known to the Tabaković supporters, but it was quite a shock to learn that Bosniak members of the SDP were involved. They were arranging votes for Grujičić in return for votes for SDP leader Bektić. Alija Tabaković accused Grujičić of diverting funds from the Srebrenica budget to help Bektić's fraudulent operation.

Some of the people whose identities were thus stolen found out what was being done ahead of the vote. For example, Salih Pašalić, residing in Netherlands, stated that he had been contacted by one of the three SDP members who were later arrested, and that he was related to one of the three. That person asked Pašalić to send him a photocopy of his identification and those of his wife and two sons. Later, upon checking, Pašalić learned that he had been registered to vote in Serbia. He was very surprised and dismayed to contemplate the fact that his own relative had behaved so—and that he had not thought the fraud would be discovered! Other whole families in France, the US, and Denmark, among others, were also unknowingly registered to vote from Serbia.

It also came out that Bektić, an assistant to Mayor Grujičić, was in fact close friends with the mayor. He had even posted photos of the two on Facebook, arm in arm. And Grujičić, responding to the arrest, came out with a classic Trumpian response: "there is a witchhunt against Serb politicians and against me as mayor...they are trying to destroy the RS and Srebrenica, criminalizing me and my colleagues."

Grujčić added that the arrests were yet another "deceit arranged by Bosniak representatives...a continued pressure on all the Bosniaks in Srebrenica who are ready for cooperation, reconciliation, and coexistence," that is, I suppose, ready to vote for a genocide-denier.

The main branch of the SDP quickly dissolved the Srebrenica branch and expelled Bektić and the others from the party. The Central Election Commission is investigating the affair. Tabaković supporters are calling for the annulment and repetition of the election. Stay tuned.

To respond to this blog, click here to e-mail me.