 Before we start, actually, I would like you to turn off your cell phones or just mute them. Welcome to the U.S. Institute of Peace for the event at Bosnia, which we co-sponsored with the Emerging Democracies Institute. I'm truly pleased to see so many people still interested in what is going on in Bosnia. As we know, things have never fully settled there. My name is Renata Stubner and I work for Governance Law and Society Center here. I'm a senior program specialist and I focus mostly on the Balkans. And the way we will proceed today, we will have our speakers here, panelists, speak for 15 minutes. I'll introduce each of them before they speak, not more than 15 minutes, and after that we'll have open floor for questions. We are also webcasting this event, so we may get some questions online. We are using our Twitter account. The information can be found on our website. So there are many things that can be touched upon today, but this particular panel will concentrate on the recent and still ongoing protests and weather and how they might influence the outcome of yet another crucial election in Bosnia and Herzegovina to be held this year in October. We've had so many crucial elections which have in general not brought much change for better. When I say better, what I have in mind is more responsible, accountable and responsive governments at all, so many levels that exist in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We've just seen more corruption, poverty and larger gap between rich and poor. The last wave of protests is all about inefficient and corrupt governments, wasteful spending and kickbacks. To give their perspective on the recent and future events, we have invited a relatively new, fresh and younger generation of activists, analysts and social scientists. Our first speaker is Zerev Bayrovich. Some of you might know him. He's the founder and the president of the Emerging Democracies Institute. The institute supports the emergence of liberal democracies, just and accountable governments and sustainable development worldwide. Before coming to Washington, he was a campaign advisor to the Socialist Democratic Party in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Thank you very much, Renata. Thank you everyone for coming. I'd like to start off by saying that the protests in Bosnia were, in my opinion, the first event after the end of the war, which was seriously covered by the international media, especially the media in this country. And a lot of the coverage, in my opinion, has been fairly subpar. And that maybe is not something that should surprise a lot of people. A lot of you who follow Bosnia regularly because Bosnia has dropped off the international map for such a long time that a lot of the journalists who covered the country have really lost touch with the realities on the ground. So having that in mind, I'll start with something unusual. I'll actually say what these protests were not. So the protests that happened in Bosnia last couple of months started on the 5th of February in the city of Tuzla in northeast Bosnia and then quickly spread across the country and resulted in the resignation of four cantonal governments. They were not instigated by anyone. A lot of the people in the political scene tried to, after a while, claim credit for the protests, but in reality that has nothing to do with how things turned out. And also there was nobody outside of Bosnia. No foreign power really had any influence over the protests or how they went. And equally important, these protests were not ethnic. There was nothing ethnic about these protests. A lot of the people in Bosnia, some of the people outside of Bosnia who follow Bosnia tried to portray these events as ethnic in nature in some way or another. They tried to say that some of the protests were, you know, there were more protests in Bosnia controlled areas of the country than the, you know, the RS or the parts of the country that the HDZ controls. But the actual reason for the protests had nothing to do with the ethnicity. The protests were actually caused by rampant corruption and absolute inability of the ruling parties to actually deliver on what they promised almost four years ago now. The response of the parties has been, I must say, as expected. They tried to portray this as either an attack on the Bosnian state. So the so-called pro-Bosnian parties tried to say that these protests were just the introduction to the breakup of the country. The RS parties, especially actually the ruling party in the RS, the SNSD, tried to say that these protests were actually turned, will turn into a movement against the RS and that the RS will somehow disappear after, you know, a few more months or weeks of the protests. And of course the HDZ claimed that these were an anti-Croat, protests and anti-Croat conspiracy that was instigated from outside of the country and that essentially will end up helping those who want to do away with the cantons, which was absolutely untrue. So as I said, in reality the protests were completely organic and caused by the rampant corruption and inability of the ruling parties to deliver on what they promised in 2010, or even some of them, you know, going as far back as 1990, one can say. And they were actually very decentralized. So there was a perception for a while in the country that protests were somehow coordinated among the different protest leaders in different cities, but that essentially is not the case. Each one of the cities had its own movement and each one of the cities had its own reasons for the protests. It started in Tuzla with the workers of privatized companies. Then they were joined by some civic groups, which then turned violent. There were of course some soccer fans in Tuzla as well. But then in Sarajevo it was kind of a different crowd. It was less of privatized workers, more of youth and soccer fans. Most are on the other hand mostly NGO activists and people who are fairly well known in the NGO community, etc. In Bihar it was a completely different theory. It was essentially a protest against the local elite there. The IRS saw some protests, but they were, you know, the ruling party did their best to make everybody stay at home. And unlike the opposition in the Federation, which tried to actually support the protests, the opposition, the IRS, the SDS decided against that. They actually came out at one point in time and said, look, we support the protests, we think they're good, but we're not going to call on people to come out into the street and protest. And my understanding of that is that the Serbian government actually, at that time the Deputy Prime Minister Vucic, now the future Prime Minister of Serbia, did not really have any interest in having a lot of trouble in the state next door because he was going to cause to victory, which actually ended up happening. And hence the Army veterans in the IRS who came out and protested were kind of left alone by the ruling parties and by the opposition parties and the SNSD actually attacked them quite severely and called them traitors, et cetera, et cetera. But I don't see any other reason for the protests in IRS not being as big as they were in the Federation, despite the fact that there were some. And then a few weeks after the protests started, basically a week after the protests started, there was something called the Tuzla Plan. Essentially there was an attempt by some of the NGO activists or civic activists in Tuzla to try to get this into some kind of framework and get it into a more organized kind of environment. After a while the plenum started spreading all across the country. And today we have plenums in many cities in Bosnia, 30 or 40 at the very least. There are many different opinions of the plenums. My opinion of the plenums is neutral. I'm not sure that they're really going to end up helping the protest because they essentially are not very coordinated amongst each other. And the goals are not very clear. So they're basically like open forums where people talk about their problems. And the people who lead the plenum, especially the Sarajevo plenum, are not really willing to introduce any kind of a hierarchy. So the actual result will be that you're going to have a lot of requests, but not much action after that. And the protests have started subsiding after the plenums were introduced. Also there are a lot of people in the opposition who try to portray themselves as having influence over the plenums, which I think is not the case. I know a lot of people who are running these plenums and they're absolute first priorities to make sure that they're not co-opted. They're terrified of being co-opted by any of the parties or the existing political elites. And they went as far as actually initially in the first introduction, in the first invitation to the first Sarajevo plenum, and I think the second one as well, they actually explicitly said they don't want any of the present members of any of the political parties to come or even NGO members, which was, you know, I mean, which left them with kind of few people that were eligible to be there. But I mean, I think that strategy actually has backfired because they actually, you know, narrowed the circle to very few people. And the other thing they did, which was very, I think, not very efficient, was that they started using the strategy of occupying public spaces, which essentially we saw here in this country about three years ago with the occupied protests. They occupied the main Sarajevo road in front of the presidency for almost a month. After a while, people started honestly getting very agitated, you know, the citizens, I mean, it kind of stopped life for, you know, for a few hours every day. And then after a while, they lost steam and the police basically just removed them. So that's where we are now. There are some people still trying to protest, but I think that the underlying anger and the dissatisfaction is still there. So despite the fact that the protests have not continued in the same manner that they started, I don't have any doubt that the anger is still there. The other important aspect of these protests is the regional response to them. There were two neighboring countries, of course, were unfortunately as involved as they are usually. But this time around, actually, for the first time in 10 years, I'm going to say something that I find hard actually to believe, that it was Serbia which was more helpful than Croatia. Because the Croat foreign minister decided to hop on a plane or a car and go to Western Mostar after everything that happened in Mostar happened. And he just met with the AGZ officials. He just visited the recently burned down Prime Minister. Yeah, sorry, you're right. The creation of Prime Minister Milanovic showed up in Western Mostar. He met with the AGZ officials there, so only Bosnian Croats. He visited the recently burned AGZ-BIH building. And his messages were, you know, fairly ethnic in nature, which was kind of a surprise to a lot of us knowing who Milanovic is. On the other hand, you had Vucic, who we know was not the best of, you know, best of Democrats until five, six years ago, who was very hands off. I mean, he did have an election coming up and he didn't really need much from Bosnia in any way. But still, I mean, he was a lot more constructive, I think, than Croatia. And then, I think that as a result of these protests, because of the fact that there was no political force that essentially profited from them and the plenums did not turn into a political force of any kind, I think if election was held today, you would have two things happening. First of all, the turnout, in my opinion, would be very low. Even lower than 2010 and 2012 turnouts were actually not bad at all. But 2008 had a lower turnout and I think you would see something like the 2008 election, which would essentially help the ruling parties because there people are going to come out and vote for sure. And I think that the SD essentially would be the biggest winner if election was held today. Because there people are going to turn out, they have a fairly large block of voters that was not very affected by what happened in these protests. And the other I think lesson learned is that change in Bosnia, just like anywhere else, and I'm sure that my colleagues are going to talk about that, in my opinion, is impossible without political involvement. I think civic engagement is extremely important. It is absolutely essential that it's there. But expecting change without political involvement I think is very unrealistic. It hasn't happened anywhere so far and it's certainly not going to happen in Bosnia. And I think a lot of the activists who were involved in these protests will have to understand that, that the political life is not easy, it's very dirty. And I know that. But trying to change things in the country without getting involved in politics is just, it's not going to happen. My, I always try to give what I think the US government should do. We are in Washington nonetheless, but as well as the EU. I think that because of the fairly low turnout that we can expect now after these protests and the methods of the protests, basically all parties are the same, all politicians are bad, all politics is bad. I think that the US government and the EU should fund GOTV efforts across the country. You know, find them in a serious manner. And I think that the US government officials and the EU officials should actually publicly come out and say that, since they're meeting these protesters and members of these plenums, they should come out and say that the anger that's there and that's very justified. I mean, I don't think there's anybody in the country who will say that the anger that we saw was not justified. It's absolutely justified. But the best way to take it out is at the ballot box. I think that's the other message that has to be publicly said. And the ruling parties have essentially become very, of course, very scared. But at the same time, you have this creeping authoritarianism that has a resurface after many years in Bosnia. You had people in most are beaten up, for example, people who were trying to organize the protests. Some of the union leaders were beaten up. Essentially, the anti-ASDZ people were beaten up. People in Sarajevo were arrested. These young kids who were alleged to have burned down the government buildings are now facing terrorism charges. I think that's preposterous. I mean, I think that that taking, so the message is, OK, we're going to start exercising the rule of law as of today. Starting with these young kids who did something or not, that a lot of people support, unfortunately. So I think that the ruling parties need to be told that doing this is absolutely unacceptable. And I think that also our friends in Zagreb, who recently joined the EU, need to understand that, despite their best intentions, what they're doing is not helping. I mean, their involvement in Bosnia now is so HDZ-centric that it basically makes the situation in the longer term a much, I think, less satisfying for Croatia, because they're going to be seen as a sort of this ethnic player and they're not going to be seen as an honest broker, which they could have been seen, I think, to enter the EU, especially. And I think they need to become aware of the fact that their support for the HDZ essentially makes the HDZ even more obstructions. And we saw the obstructionism of the HDZ after the 2010 election, when they basically held the country hostage for about four months, where they blocked the election of the Delegate to the House of Peoples. And I think they're going to be a lot worse after these elections, by the way. But I think they need to be told that whatever they're doing is not going to help them or anybody else. And I think whatever the outcome of the election, I think that the US government and the EU have to be ready to work with anybody that's elected. I think the agenda is fairly clear. It's the adoption of the Sadish Finzi decision. The so-called coordination mechanism, in my opinion, is absolutely a wrong move by the EU, and I think should be dropped as a precondition. But basically everything else, then, that Milada, I'm sure, will mention the pre-accession criteria will then kick in after we sign the SAA. And I think that there should be a readiness to work with whoever gets elected. And my last point is a fairly controversial one. I think that the US government and the EU should support any party in the RS that is willing to allow Bosnia to go into NATO. And I think SDS should be included in that as well. I mean, SDS is a party which essentially orchestrated a genocide. It's not the prettiest bunch, but the way that Doric has been going in the last six, seven years, even SDS has become an acceptable option as long as they're willing to let the country move forward. And I will end there. Thank you very much. Thank you, Reuf. Our next speaker is, he's just come from Sarajevo. So he's an activist there, Darko Brkan. He is president of the NGO Why Not, which means Why, which in Bosnia is Zaštane. The organization was established as a youth piece organization with the purpose of working on the demilitarization of Bosnia society and establishing the right to conscientious objection in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The organization is now focused mostly on civic activism, government accountability, and the use of new technologies among other things. Their most famous project is Istinomir, Truth Meter, an online platform for the monitoring and evaluation of responsibilities of public office holders and political parties in power. Istinomir platform analyzes on a daily basis public statements of public office holders and assesses their responsibility. Statements of individuals are tested for consistency and veracity as well as the fulfillment of the promises given in statements. Istinomir also monitors and analyzes the quality and level of fulfillment of electoral promises of the parties in power at different levels. Tarkov, the pleasure. Thank you, thank you for reminding me. Actually, I'll pretty much like have the same, the same, the same things said as Revolv did, but I'll probably give another perspective to everything. Basically, starting with the protests and what happened in the beginning of February in Bosnia, actually, and from the point that Revolv made that that's basically saying that the anger is still there and that it's actually alive and that it basically hasn't stopped even with some sort of pacification of the protests in the aftermath. I want to say that actually these protests, in my opinion, are a continuation of a process that actually started even like eight or 10 years ago in Bosnia with the first civic protests and first civic initiatives that were kind of based on the dissatisfaction with the work of the government. And they have scaled in the meantime, they have scaled in obviously, they have scaled in the level of violence or the level of engagement on that field of the citizens and also they have scaled obviously in the territory wise because they were usually very specific to certain cities and mostly Sarajevo in the beginning, now they're obviously happening throughout the country and I think that kind of scaling is something that we can expect in the future if the situation continues to perpetuate in terms of the way that the government is working and communicating with the citizens. So actually I think that, and my point is based on the fact that the last protests we've seen before the February ones were just like a couple of months away. They were in June 2013 with the blockade of the parliament and the ID numbers protests. And actually the essentiality of these protests was that for the cause of the ID numbers there was like a couple of hundred people gathered in the start and then like when it turned out to be some sort of an anti-establishment thing that the next day it actually turned out to be a very massive protest in scale. So I guess that actually having that in mind that we are facing probably the next round of things if the things continue in a way that they have in the past. So that's pretty much where I see the future of the country if Atreou was saying the elections or the whole political dynamics don't change very soon. And I think, but on the other hand I think this is the first time that we actually have a chance probably not as much as we had it in the couple of days in exactly immediately after the protests ended but like you know there's still a chance of changing the situation. And primarily because of the fact that actually these protests have been kind of first of all pretty violent and second of all successful in actually the government resigning after them. It has known to happen before 2008 the Kentonal City government had to resign but only after the elections a couple of months after the protests and actually the kind of a protest movement did lead to the Prime Minister of Federation resigning in 2009 but this was the first time that actually a popular demand backed by the protests immediately dismissed for Kentonal governments in a timeframe of two days. So actually I think that's where probably we should look into where the success of these protests was and how does it have a potential of changing the political dynamics in the future. I would agree with Ralph that the protests were totally spontaneous and basically came out of a, basically there was a trigger waiting to happen. All the way since the out of the box protest and blocking of the parliament in June last year there was, I think that the citizens were just waiting for the next trigger for this to happen and in this case the trigger was police reacting violently towards the protestors in Tuzla. It was in the first day it was just the workers of the state owned firms there and actually the violent reaction of the police triggered the protests throughout the country and obviously it was just waiting to happen. So basically they were pretty spontaneous and to be honest they were not so, they were not, the protest did not scale in the number of people overall on the street because potentially the protests in June 2013 or even the protests in 2008 would be, for instance in Sarajevo bigger in numbers than the ones in February but they did scale in the level of rage and dissatisfaction of the people and basically in the aftermath in the government resigning in these cities and also I think that the fact that the different parties who held office in different cities was also very substantial to the protest because in the start there was not the whole movement of the political parties against the protest because some of them actually did support the whole thing happening only in Tuzla and being confined to Tuzla but then when it spread around then there was like a wide reaction by the parties but actually in the end it was, in my opinion, already too late and the fact that they were spontaneous and that they were not articulated and another point is that they were not articulated in the start I kind of know that because I helped articulate at least the protests in Tuzla by suggesting that they, because the first demands were just changing the way of treatment of the firms in Tuzla and they maintained that way until I think mid-6th of February when actually through some of the groups there I kind of tried to instruct them to basically ask for the resignation of the Canton government which in the end they did and that was the shift in the demands that was crucial for the future of the protest because then all the other cities had similar demands copying what happened in Tuzla on the second day of protest and I think that shift of articulation was very crucial to actually the government's resigning in the end and basically these are the basic facts I want to make about the protests and the most let's say important one being that actually I personally think that if the situation continues to be the same that we are facing more of these in the future I've been said that the same that there's not a big chance after the protest in June but obviously only a couple of months later they happen so I'm guessing that it's the case this time again. On the aftermath of the protest I think we are all again seeing a continuation of a process in a way because I think that there's a couple of similar mistakes being made in the aftermath of the protest as they happened before and I'm just gonna do a couple of them basically just to give my opinion on where the plenum's movement is heading and where the whole I would say civil society movement after the protest is heading and where I guess that it should change in order for things to be able to have a perspective of changing. First thing is definitely I think that there was a very bad articulation of demands after the protest towards the government and I think that actually the whole process because it was very important and the first demands that came out were basically something very effective and efficient and unfortunately they haven't in a couple of I'll just illustrate a couple of points I personally think that the whole demand of an expert government just a couple of months before elections is kind of was wrong due to the fact that actually that would basically take the burden of accountability from the ruling parties if it had happened so in that way and we still don't know how the governments will be formed so we don't know that my opinion is that they should have asked at least for concentration governments that could actually be held responsible in terms of the parties that actually are in the parliament so the whole dismissal of the political system and the parliaments was kind of wrong in terms of especially in the framework of looking into the next elections just a couple of months away from the protests. I think that the second thing was that actually no matter that the whole story was about the openness of the process I think that there was not enough inclusiveness in the process of the forming of the plenums and I think that actually the coalition building part was missed in the whole process I think that there should have been much more outreach to civic groups, to individuals, to even people who are politically active and I think that actually the coalition building process should have been much more developed outside of just saying okay like there's an open door and it's an open, as Rauf mentioned it became to be an open forum for people who usually don't have a place to express their dissatisfaction and don't get me wrong, I don't think it shouldn't be I just don't think it shouldn't be the only thing that the plenums are doing. Coordination was already mentioned by Rauf so I pretty much shared the opinion on that point and the differences between plenums in the countries also a shared point that I do make myself. Also I think that the whole activity strategy and the PR strategy was kind of, given the fact that it was all spontaneous was wrong in the end and I think that the whole exhaustion of the people in the protests and of the people of the cities was the right way to go. I think that it should have been planned differently and executed differently in a way to maintain the possibility of legitimacy of the protests that happened in February and I think that was lost because the legitimacy of the movement depended on the legitimacy of the protests that happened in February and I think that was easily left behind in the whole process because somehow the process of establishing forums and plenums was considered to be, in a way by the participating people more important than the protests themselves and I think that actually the whole fact that Rauf mentioned about the police, first police brutality and then the court prosecutions that happened in Sarajevo should have been treated differently in the aftermath by civil society and by the plenums and that actually they have a fair chance of delegitimizing the protests. For instance, if these terrorism charges continue, I think that actually that might even prevent what I was saying before about the possibility of the new way of protest because if there would be sanctions of like a lot of years of prison for these persons because they are actually facing that the minimum sentence in Bosnia law for that is like five years and I'm guessing that actually the government will try to do whatever they can in order for these things not to be a threat in the future. So I'm guessing that that should have been an activity towards which the aftermath of the protests should have taken more parts towards and actually I think that the whole everyday protest movement was kind of wrong because it basically isolated the population and it actually brought down the level of support because if you look at the numbers that were done just a few days after the protests like there's a vast majority and that's where another scaling of these protests was a vast majority of population throughout the country supported the protests and everything that they brought on one side and even like I think the number was 52 or 53% of the population supported the violence happening on the protests which was like very different to whatever happened before and I think that over the time of the continuation of the protest that support was lost and that's another point. Now trying to transfer that toll to elections and to the work in the future. I think there's a fair chance actually here even now of changing the whole political discourse and the dynamics around that and I think that actually all these things have kind of brought at the moment the whole thing to some sort of a pacification but I think that actually in the future if the whole movement becomes more spread and basically takes in different initiatives from civil society, from political parties and actually I think there's a fertile soil for actually trying to establish communication with the political parties and the government in a different way. I don't think that actually before elections, well outside the working on the elections and the whole pre-election discourse there's time for that but I think that elections will open up also a space for that. First of all, because I think that the elections will, if the thing stays the same will definitely would show a low turnout unless there were substantial efforts by both the political parties and civil society and citizens for that to be changed and that would mean a couple of things. That would mean definitely a different approach by the political parties to the whole system of both elections and running the government. It will very much depend on how the governments in the four cantons will be formed and how effective they will be in these next months and it will very much depend on the fact whether the parties are ready to change not only their policies and programs because obviously if you look at this to me and our data, all of their programs are pretty okay in terms of what they actually promise by the implementation is totally. I mean I think currently they are at 3% a couple of months before elections of accomplishment of promises and the previous government in the 2006, 2010 mandate was 5% so at the best we are expecting the same number as the previous government so it's not about the programs, it's about the people so what they have to understand is that only by changing the candidates only by changing the persons on the list only by changing the faces that are promoting the parties they can regain any trust within the population at this moment there's like 60% of absentees that we expect and there's additional up to 30% of the total population of people who are undecided so only around 10 to 12% of the population is decided on the next elections so like that has never happened before even in Bosnia and actually the parties are facing a great dissatisfaction by the citizens on the elections if they don't change something in this and that's where I see a chance I see a chance also for civil society in the time before the elections to try to I don't know if illustration is a wrong word but maybe to try to like let's say initiate some sort of internal party reform and illustration of the candidate lists from the people who actually don't have any support within the population and actually coming to that point I think that there's another change attached to this I think that after these protests the parties should be and I think they are more ready than ever to open up some forms of dialogue with the citizens and civil society and I think that the problem with that is that actually nor the civil society nor the citizens are willing to talk or negotiate with the people who have failed so dearly until now so I think that's why they need to change the names and people in order to even be able to talk to the people of course there's an alternative there's an alternative of new phases coming up new parties happening but you know like that's in the frame of speculation and I don't know anything about that what will happen but I'm talking about the current political discourse and the current political parties they would need to transform and they would need to definitely change if you want to move forward and I think there's a chance for that I mean like however little it might be it's bigger than ever before and actually one other thing about elections that I find a little bit good and I'm not sure whether I will because you said that parties will be even more harsh in a way but more uncompromising I think that what we should expect from the elections that I'm hoping that no party in Bosnia will actually have a blockade control over a blockade mechanism in the aftermath of these elections and that's I think something that we should hope for in the elections of 2014 and I don't think that on any level outside of the cantonal we might even face that no party would have a control over a blockade mechanism which would make actually the whole system much more compromising potentially I mean I'm not saying that it will happen I'm just saying that it might might provide alternatives on every side of the political spectrum and within every ethnicity and within all political parties it will provide alternatives both in forming of the government and in the functioning of the institutions in the future if that happens in that way also it's not like 100% bulletproof chance but there's a chance there also couple of conclusions I think that actually it is a good and I'm speaking from the civil society point of views obviously I'll make this point is that there's a big chance of actually civil society when I say civil society I mean a variety of NGOs I mean the plenums in their current form or any form that they change in in the future should be able to should actually take the lead role in argumentation of popular demand towards the government and should actually be initiating the forms of dialogue that might be out there on the table actually I think that it should and I'll kind of mention that already before initiate the processes of demands for the change of the parties and for the transformation of the parties in their internal democracy and in the people who are in the parties and actually I think that civil society should try to establish a strong coalition before these elections on these issues and should actually for the first time coalitions have happened before the elections but they've never maintained after the elections and that's I think one thing that's very wrong within civil society in Bosnia I think they should a coalition like that that would focus on accountability and political parties should be maintained even after the elections and regarding the political parties they pretty much said everything and I think that actually outside of the fact that political parties should actually for the first time try to offer realistic and let's say reality based programs outside of the visual thinking they were promising in the past and I think that if they come up with some the first party that comes up with that and actually that promotes new people that will have dialogue with the that will be eager to have dialogue with the citizens would be the party that stands good chances on the upcoming elections and in the future elections in Bosnia and yeah, pretty much that's it Okay, thank you Darko will have more time to hear from Darko when we have questions from the audience Our last speaker is Professor Milada Vacchudova She comes from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has followed the Balkans since her early days She will give us a different perspective She recently published an article in Foreign Affairs but her major work was a book, Europe Undivided where she challenges European Union to continue using enlargement as a tool to promote liberal democracy ethnic tolerance and economic prosperity I'd also like to read just a brief quotation what she wrote in 2005 in a memo prepared for the state of the European Union Conference in Princeton long before Croatia became a member of the EU and events in Ukraine happened this is quote from her paper for the Western Balkan state of Croatia, Macedonia Serbia, Montenegro, Albania and Bosnia, Herzegovina moving through the process of qualifying to join the EU offers the only real prospect for stability, democracy and economic revitalization integrating the Western Balkan state into the EU is the cornerstone of the long-term foreign policy of all international actors toward the region Today, it was 2005, strict EU conditionality is the most important if not the only reason why the Croatian and Serbian governments are turning over war criminals to ICTY in the Hague For Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova and other aspiring candidates however, the current political climate in the EU is a serious setback for their EU membership prospects Ukraine and probably, in particular Turkey are large states that for myriad reasons would be difficult for the EU to absorb even if the benefits of doing so would be considerable So, let's hear Professor Vacudeva and her European perspective and by the way, she's the only one who doesn't come from Bosnia originally on this panel She's originally from Czech Republic Point in the United States too But, origin That's right, my parents were refugees of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 They were camping in Texas when they heard on the radio that the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia So, I'm just really delighted to be here and I'd like to thank Renata and the US Institute for Peace and Aso Rove and the Emerging Democracies Institute I'd also like to thank the grant-giving agency that has allowed me to retool myself because in fact, originally my work was on East Central Europe, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia and then also Romania and Bulgaria And most of my colleagues who we all started out doing these dissertations in the 90s in East Central Europe most of my colleagues still work on that region but I got two grants from the National Council of East European and Eurasian Research, NCR which is funded by Tidalay in the State Department and this is what allowed me to retool So my new cases are Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia and Croatia and I'm flirting with Montenegro but I'm not so sure And as some of you may know this program has now been cut which I think is extremely unfortunate because it's impossible to build expertise without funding for field research and that's what the NCR program allowed me to do and I've also received funds from the European Union Center for Excellence to do this Let me just start a little bit by talking about the protests and then I'll move to the European Union I agree very much that the protests have been important you know, it's really the first time that I think there's sustained pressure on Bosnian politicians for better governance and this is important because governance has been atrocious in Bosnia, right? If you look at how the country is governed at all the different levels it is inefficient, the levels of corruption are astounding the use of state resources is not at all efficient and the people who suffer from this are ordinary Bosnian citizens of whatever ethnicity, right? And so ordinary citizens, it's really good to see them put pressure on politicians that's the only way that we can have sustained change Bosnia's main problem has been that you have a political class which is happy with the status quo, right? We all think of Bosnia as in need of serious change in terms of economic revitalization and improvement in human development and employment and everything but for the political class the status quo is convenient they're engaged in systemic rent seeking and they can use ethnic politics to win elections and legitimize their power Now Bosnian politicians aren't alone in having this kind of double act of rent seeking justified by kind of ethnic politics this happens across the region, right? But we've seen changes for the better in neighboring countries and hopefully will in Bosnia I think it's, I find it kind of alarming in my research because when I interview political party members which is what I've been doing in Bosnia as well as everybody else you know there's almost a level of collusion on the part of the leaders of the main political parties of the three ethnic groups the Bosnian Serbs, the Bosnian Croats and the Bosniaks, right? You have a sort of sense that when the cameras are on you know we're fighting, we're debating when the cameras are off at the back of the kafana you know we're all kind of making sure the status quo remains the same and this is actually in some ways fueled by the fact that the Bosnian state is so large so you have a lot of ordinary Bosnian citizens that also fear change, right? There's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of people's jobs depend on the current or tied to the status quo as well and so you have ordinary Bosnians who vote continue to vote for these parties that they know are highly corrupt because there's a lot of what will change me and for me and for my job. So having finally pressure for better government is really important and of course it's worrying if the protests and the plenums are kind of sealing themselves off from society in general. Now there are a couple of real roadblocks to change and I'll talk about these briefly and I'm happy to expand in the Q and A. I agree completely with Raywa Fandarko that the number one problem is that the protesters and the plenums are not translating their political energy into political parties whether that means forming new parties or transforming existing parties and you know what, you can even try to transform existing politicians, right? We don't have to look far in the region to find people who we would have never thought would be reforming the judiciary and preparing their country for the EU for example, Frutich in Serbia. I'm very sympathetic to this anti-politics kind of atmosphere in the plenums. I had a close, you know, I used to work for some time in the Czech Republic. I worked for some time for Václav Havel. I was on the streets of Prague and during the Revolution of 89 and the Civic Forum in Prague as well as Solidarity in Poland had this kind of anti-politics. You know, we're gonna do the things through civil society, an alternative way to parties but you know what, they were totally outmaneuvered by regular politicians working through regular parties and there's simply no other way. It's political parties that create programs, get elected and then govern whether or not their government matches in any way, the program they put forward. So the absolutely worst thing that dissatisfied Bosnians could do at this point is not vote. I find that really alarming when I hear from people in Bosnia that a lot of people are planning to protest by not voting. That is just handing power to the worst people and also not putting pressure on those people to change. So voting is important and then the question is can new parties succeed? It's difficult, right? But you can also take over existing parties, right? You can colonize existing parties. Problem in Bosnia is that the large, existing powerful parties are quite authoritarian in the way they are run. There's not a lot of internal debate, everything is decided by the big kahuna on top. So those parties are a little bit hard to change but that's nevertheless what needs to be done and many people don't want to join a party but in fact that might be the right way forward if you really wanna change Bosnia. We have the same problem today in Ukraine of translating the amazing energy of the Medan into the boring political work of being a political party member. My friends who study Ukraine have exactly the same frustration. Why don't all, if all these civic activists and budding professors of political theory on the Medan would just join an existing or form new parties and translate that energy into politics, if you don't then you leave the stage open to the old crowd to Timoshenko to others. Now if we look around the region, we have, as I said, a reason to hope that you can translate parties, transform parties. Rucic, for example, in Serbia, at this point has done a large amount of work to get Serbia moving on the EU accession track, of course, starting to regulate relations with Kosovo but what he's also done, and if Rucic was hit by a bus today, I think this is what he should be remembered for, not that I'm wishing that but, is that he has moved a lot of Serbian voters away from nationalist positions. So if you look at the, I was lucky enough to look at some of a lot of opinion poll work. Ordinary serves the level to which they care about losing Kosovo has decreased dramatically and their opposition or their support for EU membership has increased. People who are in his party, people who are progressive and even, so former SNP voters. I mean SNS voters. We also have Sanader and Croatia as an example of a party that was authoritarian and corrupt and so forth, transforming itself in order to take on the mantle of preparing Croatia for EU accession. And so something could be learned from that. How did these parties transform and can we transform the Bosnian parties? Now the problem with the Bosnian parties is as Darko said, their program is perfect. For Rucic and Sanader, it was about changing the program first and that was quite an enterprise for those of those parties. In Bosnia, it's trickier, right? The program is fine. It's just that the implementation is horrible. Now of course what Rucic and Sanader now need or now Rucic needs is a very strong opposition to counter him, to create that checks and balances. That's something again that's missing in Bosnia. We don't feel like you have a ruling party and then a strong opposition parties that are checking what the government is doing. The second roblox, of course, and we kind of believe we got this far without mentioning the Dayton institutions. Meaningful reform of the Dayton institutions is probably not possible in the near future. And interests based on ethnic identity remain in all three constituent groups. And the problem with the Dayton institutions is they're being used and there's excuse to not get anything done. And they're used as an excuse to justify how bad things are in terms of governance. What really needs to happen now is to stop blaming the Dayton institutions, stop blaming the EU as well. I'll get to that and start thinking about how existing politicians and political parties can improve governance within the existing institutions. And that I think is one of the positive things about the plenums is that there have been concrete, very concrete suggestions about how to improve governance. And at the Cantona level with the resignation of some of these governments and now hopefully a real attempt to continue to watch and monitor and debate changes, we can see some actual results. Now the Dayton institutions are obviously tempting. They create an incentive structure that you could argue makes good parties go bad, right? We, you know, the US government and the Americans, we were very excited about Dodiq's party. Does anybody remember that? He was our man. You know, we funded him. We supported him. And the same thing with Lagomja and the SDP. And both of those parties have essentially gone to nationalism, ethnic scapegoating and this kind of authoritarian rent seeking. So the trick is going to be to find a way, despite the bad incentives that are created by the Dayton institutions and the fact that such a complex governance system means that corruption becomes even, even easier. We need to find a way within those existing institutions to improve things. So that leads me to the European Union. The EU accession process, I will say from, I think if you wanted to just say one sentence about the EU is that so far it's been outfoxed by Bosnian party leaders in the sense that they have managed to protect the status quo from almost any kind of change, each with their own agenda, of course, from the EU pre-accession process. Once we get a stabilization and association agreement in place in Bosnia, the accession process will reach more actors. And this is why I've argued that, unfortunately, although I completely agree with the idea of state inch frenzy, the problem has been that the EU has made this a condition of moving forward and of implementing the stabilization and association agreement. And that has meant that a lot of programs that would help do things like improve state administration competence and also tackle corruption, the kind of things that the protestors were angry about, accession process just hasn't gotten the instruments in place yet because Bosnia doesn't even have a stabilization and association agreement. And so in a way, kind of hanging their hat on this one, requirement made it easy for the Bosnian political elites to stave off the process. And once the process gets going, it will be uncomfortable for them. It will be the case that you will have a higher chance of being arrested and put in jail for corruption. I still like to say that that chance is very small. They should rest easy, but it does increase somewhat. So there's a need to recalibrate EU leverage so that it focuses on those pre-accession requirements that improve the functioning of the state and administrative reform. But I just want to return to the big point, which is that none of this is possible without the political parties in Bosnia buying into the process, right? And at this point, they haven't. It's easy to say, and a lot of people say it, and I find it very frustrating, that the reason that Bosnia is such a mess is because the EU has failed. Well, think about it from the other point of view. The European Union put in place an enlargement process. And in fact, the results of the enlargement process were, I would argue, better than anyone expected. When the EU first put that enlargement process in place, it wasn't to go democratize all of post-communist Europe. The purpose was to protect the EU from countries that look like Greece, right? The purpose was to make sure that the only countries that joined were ones that jumped through a lot of hoops and had actually satisfied EU requirements. It was only in 99 or 2000 that the EU started using these tools proactively as a foreign policy. We're going to stabilize and revitalize the Balkans through EU enlargement. But changing the tools has been slow, and you can definitely criticize the EU for not adapting. Tools that worked pretty well in the Czech Republic and Poland needed to be revamped and expanded for countries in the Western Balkans. But it's also the case that Bosnia just has very difficult initial conditions, right? And the worst and the most difficult initial condition is, going back to the beginning, is the fact that political parties don't feel pressure from their voters to perform and to get their country moving into the EU. And there are a lot of reasons for that that we can talk about. But up to now, parties in Bosnia have not worried that they will not get elected because the EU pre-accession process is stalled. And that's been, that's different than in Serbia or Croatia or the other candidate countries. Thank you, Milada. Is that basically, can we open the floor? Absolutely. So now, thank you, Milada, Darko and Reuf, for giving us such an interesting and diverse, I would say, view on what's going on. And we have a very, I see some famous experts on the Balkans here in the audience. And we expect to hear some interesting questions from you. If you would like to make a question, if you can, please stand up and get to one of the mics that are on both sides of the aisle. Introduce yourself and make a question. But before, you can form a line if you want. But before we do that, I would like to make a question first. As the moderator, I think I deserve to have that right. And this is something that I heard recently, the news that Radio Free Europe and Voice of America service, Bosnian service and some other services are about to close this year, for the reason we will not discuss here. But so my question is for Darko, Reuf, or if Radio Free Europe, probably Darko, if Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America are to close their Bosnian service this year, where would citizens go to get their independent news locally? Because people get. I can always promote myself and say, it's true, but it's not true. It's not true because we are very focused on what we do. And we are focused on party promises and statements of the politicians. But that kind of information you should look at our website. For my answer to that is that actually I do every morning hear the regional news of Radio Free Europe and my computer while having breakfast. And it's actually somehow the only place where I know that I will not have any issues with whatever I hear. And what I hear is basically something that is without any influence or without anybody. And that's the bottom line. And actually I do read all the news. I do follow all the media in Bosnia and some of them regionally. But actually, and I do know how to recognize what happens there and what is true or not. But for many, these two outlets are actually the only place where actually they can read something without any influence. Not only that, it's actually professionally done that all angles are covered. And actually there's a lot of research, a lot of phone calls, a lot of things happening behind in order to get these reports out. So I think that actually I would have my potential, let's say, suggestions for improvement in terms of outreach, in terms of how many people do get to these news. But in terms of the quality of the programming and what it is, I think definitely that that's the place that we're looking at. Is there anybody who can fill that gap? At this moment, I mean, no, I don't see a local. In Bosnia, I'm talking about Bosnia, I don't see a local outlet outside of a variety of information you get on online portals that you can actually try to pick and choose from. I don't see an alternative. Especially when it gets to journalism, real journalism. I mean, the news you will get, because it's kind of audio. But journalism investigative reporting and stuff like that, I don't think so. Thank you. We have a first question. Please introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Ada Hativovic. And I would like to say hi to the panelists. And thank you for the wonderful event. And I have a comment and a question, mainly for all of them, but for the professor as well. It's what I noticed is that lately, the EU and the US as well, but now it got confirmed again. They somehow now see that Serbia and Croatia advancing in their democratic levels and political efforts, but also that the Bosnia is stagnating. I was wondering if you don't, I mean, don't mind to comment. How much of an involvement do you still see of these two neighboring countries in the politics of Bosnia and the level of stagnation that is caused by this involvement? Because Bosnia, as we know, also the Dayton Agreement was signed by the three countries, Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, the presidents of those countries. And mainly, maybe for Rao Fendarko, do you see that playdoms at least could be a platform for education of the citizens for the forthcoming elections because we know we don't, the people don't really or usually voice their concerns in any structured way. They haven't so far. So maybe if you don't mind to comment on that. Institution, please. Sorry? What is your affiliation? Not the World Bank. The World Bank. We should be tired. You want to answer? Should we gather? Okay. And who was the next? Okay, your name and affiliation? Christopher Munger, Public International Law and Policy Group. Just a question about the general kind of historical discussion that's going on today. Obviously there's maybe a lot of upset and a lot of opportunities for corruption and nephatism and bad governance because of the complications coming from the Dayton Accords and the system of government that set up. So what are the chances of maybe reform to the Dayton Accords, the Constitution, and then what is the outcome that people are hoping to see if that does take place? Thank you. You want to, can I open the outcome? I'll take the first question, yes. Serbia and Croatia are involved, of course, in Bosnia. Most of their involvement has been negative. For a number of years, Croatia was actually a very positive player, especially during the reign of President Masic, in my view. But that has since changed, Croatia. It's very involved and was very involved even in the government formation in 2010 and 2011. Serbia, of course, has been involved for a number of years, although that involvement now seems to have changed. I mean, they're now trying to do something that would help them present a new face towards you, which I think is very good. But I think the one actor that has often been neglected in, especially in Bosnia actually is Russia. Mr. Dorek is fairly close to Mr. Putin. I mean, I don't know how much people really follow that, but he was one of the few people who went after, after Crimea was annexed, he went up to Moscow and met with Mr. Lavrov, and they had a very nice exchange there. One of the many exchanges that Mr. Dorek has had with them in Moscow. So I think that a lot of Bosnia's inability to enter NATO is directly caused by influence that Mr. Putin exerted over Bosnia. That has often been unreported because that the, very frankly, the interest in the Western capitals for confrontation with Moscow, especially in Germany for confrontation with Moscow over Bosnia was almost nonexistent. So I think that the influence of the regional countries must be viewed through actually these larger relations that we have on the international level. And you asked about plenums in education, whether they can educate the public to an extent, maybe, but I lived in Bosnia for 12 years before coming here. So I don't have a feeling that people actually can't say what they think. I mean, they are in smaller cities, people are sometimes unable to raise their voice, but in bigger urban areas, there's fair amount of freedom, I mean, freedom of speech, people can say what they think. And it's not about, I think that what was missed in the plenum is that, you know, this is not about giving people a chance to say what was wrong, Bosnia is on an autocracy. I mean, it's about getting things done. It's about pushing the parties to do those things. And I think, you know, by people saying that, it's not, I don't think that's really, I think it was a wasted opportunity, honestly, because they wanted to educate the public. I mean, you educate the public in different ways, but so I don't think that's really the place to educate the public on democracy. Okay, the question from PLPG about refood. I can take, I'll take the plenums and the PLPG question. I'm like, on the plenum's question, actually I'll just add to Ralph because I mostly agree with him, even though I'm not this like exclusive in terms of education, I think that it is a place that could be used by some people that actually are not in the spotlight and don't have the place to say what they feel. And it's more of a, not of an educational kind, but more of a place where certain individuals can actually really come and say what's on their chest. But on the other hand, it's hard to talk about elections education when you don't know what's the position of plenums on the elections itself. And I don't think it's like, I don't think it's definitely not the unanimous in terms of whether the people should vote or not at all. So that's kind of a, that's where I see an issue in that. And I'm not sure, like there is, I mean, I think that actually the plenum should become a part of civil society in some of the ways that actually are feasible and productive. And I think that should happen. I don't know if it will happen, but I'm hoping for that to happen. On the question of the constitutional changes, I think that I'll be a little bit controversial because I am totally for changing the date and arrangement. But like in many ways, the whole process of constitutional changes has been counterproductive in the past years because it has blocked the political processes totally. And like I'll just give you an example. This year, just I think two months ago, the state parliament was about to vote on the removing of a constitutional provision that says that the parliamentarians cannot, during their mandate, have their salaries decreased, which is in the constitution. And the reason for not voting for that was because they are waiting for the state-shifth constitutional process and they will not vote on this before that happens. So like, I'm just telling you how things run and in many cases it is counterproductive to the political processes on the ground and it's making things less compromisable on the ground. I mean, I'm totally for it, but it needs to come in the place and time and with some chance of success because everything else that you've seen has failed. And actually, I've been here 2010 talking about small incremental steps outside of the big packages and four years later on I'm in the same position. So I don't know. Thank you. I'm just being really brave. So on the question about neighboring countries, I mean, of course, to the extent that Croatian and Serbian governments are supporting political party leaders who are, you know, practicing horrendous government and are very corrupt, this is not helping Bosnia. On the flip side, you know, there's a certain dramatization in the Bosnian media in Sarajevo about the relationship between Republic of Srpska and Serbia. There's nothing surprising there. People in Republic of Srpska who are Serb, they feel Serb and they feel a lot of affection towards Belgrade and Serbia. Just like Hungarians in Romania feel a lot of affection towards Hungary and Budapest. And you can describe that in different ways, but it's kind of a reality, right? And, you know, today, if you're a Hungarian living in Romania, you can get a Hungarian passport. This is kind of the norm in Europe and so it's probably likely that that will take place as well. And I think one danger is that there'll be an overreaction to what is sort of a, should be expected in normal relationship. As far as reforming the Dayton institutions, you know, the Cantons should be reformed. Of course they should be reformed. I mean, the first step, you can't really reform the relationship between the Republic of Srpska and the Federation because Dogyik will not allow it. And he is extremely well funded. He's got Washington lawyers working for him. He's very careful. He knows exactly what he's doing and he's not gonna allow it. You could have reformed the Federation and the, you know, the U.S. has tried to support that over the last few years and that has also gone nowhere. It's correct to say that the Cantons are guaranteed some of the autonomy that the Croatian community wants. On the other hand, the Cantons are also the level of government that really was the object of a lot of the anger in the protest. It's the level of government which seems to be the most inefficient and corrupt and kind of, you know. Makes Bosnia stand out in terms of how states in the world are run. What we need in, is at the moment, you know, in order to reform the Dayton institutions, you would need voters in Republic of Srpska to prefer to reduce the power of Republic of Srpska in the name of efficiency and good government. And we're not there. We're not there. And, okay, thank you, we have a next few questions. Good morning, Renata, I don't know if you know me. My name is Edward Joseph with Johnson Concise. Renata, congratulations, they're great and very timely panel. What I would like to ask is just three quick bullet points on the plenums. First, the bullet point is on the energy of the plenums. I correspond as I'm sure many people here do with colleagues and friends in Sarajevo, very bright and well informed as you are, who actually do not share your view about the prospect of war protests. The view that I get is that the energy has gone out of this and it's a rather marginal movement. And, Darko, I think you made a quite interesting point that what was the real trigger was the police brutality. One would imagine that leaders with a vested interest in not having a repeat probably have learned their lesson and would probably avoid some of these triggers. So, number one is the energy. Why is this person wrong and why are you right? That in fact there are these looming repeat protests. Second is on the agenda. Professor, I couldn't agree with you more that what's missing in Bosnia on the EU track compared to Croatia and Serbia is that there is no pressure. But there's certainly no pressure on the EU track coming from the plenums either. It's utterly missing there. It's not at all a factor. So the question then becomes, are we really just looking to these plenums for inspiration in terms of what to do or in fact is the sad situation in Bosnia going to require an outside catalyst to change? I think this is what the professor might have been suggesting I think correctly. So, then last on Republic of Serbsko, which I think it's striking has hardly gotten any mention here today and I'm very pleased that you mentioned the Dodik visit informed by my friends and colleagues and sorry that in fact Dodik announced yesterday that he got 70 million euros, that there's a 70 million euro loan from Moscow with a promise of 200 million at the end. In the past, we might have discounted this as Dodik's boasts, but we know after Ukraine, Crimea and the situation now, this is no joke. And so with all due respect, professor, I'm not so sure we can simply talk about the quote affection that Serbs have in Republic of Serbsko comparing that to other people in Europe. Serbs have an entity in Bosnia and that is a fundamental and striking difference. And again, I don't see where plenums in any way address the need to reach out and cooperate with Serbs across the EBL on these kinds of issues. Thank you. Thank you. I would just like to clarify that actually, Dodik, he got the first tranche. He got, he canceled IMF canceled the loan. So he turned to the Russian and they gave him 300 out of which he has received the first tranche, 70 million already. So he's getting the rest, which will be mostly used to pay off IMF loan and fund probably his election, but we'll hear. The implications of that could be quite serious, at least Patty Ash don't think so. But it's still a loan and we don't know the terms of the loan, the interest or anything, but let's hear. So we have three questions. Oh, you want to, okay, let's combine that, although there is so much here and we have another question. I think that will be the last one because we are short on time. Could you introduce yourself and affiliation? My name is Felicia Mboro, I'm from PLPG. And seeing very things have turned out after the protests in Bosnia and how the Minister for Security handled it, it's clear to see why Bosniaks should be disillusioned about the elections. So what are some of the practical steps that NGOs, civil society can actually take to encourage more people to participate in the elections? I assume that would be for that, okay. And we'll take the last question from Mr. Kessich. Could you introduce yourself for those who don't know who you are? Mr. Kessich, the director of the Republic of Syrpska office here in Washington, D.C. Before asking my question, there are two things I want to take issue with. Why are we not surprised? First and foremost is the implication that the IRS has in some way some kind of sinister relationship with Russia. The IRS is currently in the process of negotiating a loan of $300 million with a U.S. firm that's representing a group of bankers. Every country in the region, every entity in Bosnia is desperate to get funding for finishing very important infrastructure projects. The IRS is no different from that. The Israeli government has put together a project funded by the Chinese government for agricultural irrigation in the IRS. The IRS has extensive economic relations with European countries, including Italy, Slovakia, Greece, a number of others as well. So it's very disturbing to hear that everything being phrased in terms of a Cold War relationship where either you're with us or against us, especially in a time of great economic difficulties. Second point is this notion that the IRS is somehow preventing developing a better relationship between the two entities. One of the things that was overshadowed and this is where my question that comes from is an agreement, and I would say it was a historic agreement between the two prime ministers of the two entities, the IRS and the Federation. Basically ending a blockade in a very important sector of the economy, energy. Coming to an agreement that opened up funding that allowed for the implementation of previous agreements. And I'm wondering, is that perhaps a model for Bosnia's future, the agreement of the two entities, given that the state is bloated with 23,000 employees, same level as the former Yugoslavia had upon its disintegration. Thank you. Okay, so we have these questions. I would start actually with Darko answering PLPG question and then we'll get in, because this may go a little bit longer than I expected. What suicide it can do? Yeah, that and the question on the protests. Actually, I've been given the same thoughts in August 2013, like from maybe the same people, I don't know who you talk to, but like, you know, and also, I don't know, after our protests in 2008, there was this talk, like, you know, Dustin movement is dead, and that's it, you know, because there was a couple of stones thrown at the cantonal assembly buildings. And it turned to be wrong, you know, and I firmly believe at this point that actually, unless the things change in terms of political dynamics and how the government is actually performing, I don't think we are far away from the new wave of protests, elections might postpone that for a while because that's another way to engage citizens, but you know, like, if the things perpetuate, I don't think we'll need to wait years for things to happen again. And I firmly believe, and also the history has proven in the last couple of years that that's the way things go. And on the elections and on the, and that's always a hard question when you want to answer the question, how to get more people at the elections. And it will definitely, ultimately, depend on the parties and what they have to offer, you know, but where we can help is actually with the current situation, the current numbers that we have, the people don't believe in the existing parties in Bosnia. And that, if you want to change that, that's the only way to go there is actually to ask the parties to give something new that they haven't given before and actually to change the way that they treat politics. And in my opinion, without parties taking charge in the, while in the government, we won't have the Wucic case in Bosnia because they need to show something in order to gain trust in that way. But like, you know, the only way they can do it before elections is transforming their party list to offering new people and actually saying we've got new faces that will do things differently. And I think that's the only way they could actually help us raise the number of voters. And also, you know, like, there's a potential always of trying to get the word out about the doings of the government and then instructing the people actually to change the current people in the government, even if it's with the people that used to be in the government before but are from parties that are not currently in the government, that's also an option. So, you know, like, I see these two points and, but I only support anything that's educated, voting rather than just like, you know, saying the people that they should participate in it because it's a democratic process. I think we should have some substance to it. And like, you know, that's, these are our ways. Some of them, if you have tried before, and then on top of the ones that you've tried before, we'll try using this party transformation thing because I think it's the right way to go at this particular moment. Thanks, Annie. You're welcome, you're welcome. Sure, I'll go ahead. Second, no doubt. Thank you for your questions. I think, you know, you asked about whether an outside catalyst for change is needed. You know, I think probably the best bet is to try to have Bosnia as much as possible be going through the pre-accession process like its neighbors. The thing which stands out about Bosnia now is that it's stalled in the pre-accession process. And that is why reluctantly, I think, I come to the argument that St. Ditch-Pincey was a mistake as a kind of unless you do this line in the sand, we won't move forward. Because it's a line in the sand that's so easy for the parties to leave in place. Right, of course we can't agree because this affects our fundamental interests as our ethnic group. So once the EU pre-accession process gets going and the stabilization and association agreement is enforced, there will be so many more multiple kind of entries of EU leverage into Bosnian state administration and policy making. And that is a slow process and it's probably going to be even slower in Bosnia than in the neighboring states, but I think it's important. The other thing is, going back to what the panelists already said, why hasn't the EU pre-accession process become a kind of focal point for opposition and in the plenums? This happened in Slovakia, in Romania, in Croatia, in Serbia, where all kinds of parties and civic actors who were dissatisfied with the current regime essentially couldn't agree on a lot of things. They were all the way on the left and all the way on the right with many different interests but they could agree on EU integration and EU being kind of a focal point of cooperation among all of these groups. And so maybe this is something that could happen in Bosnia. As for the question about Dogeek and his relationship, you know, his relationship with Belgrade is distinct from his relationship with Moscow, right? So I would put those two in very different categories and I would hope that his relationship with Moscow if it develops in this direction will be unpopular with his voters. Or to put it another way, look at what's happened in Serbia, right? 10 years ago we were talking about Serbia as the exception in the Balkans, the one country that wants to be more with Russia than with the West. We don't see hardly any of that anymore. You know, there's only one party in the Serbian parliament that we would categorize as anti-EU and pro-Russia. And so hopefully the voters in our public as Serbsko will move and it's not surprising perhaps that they're moving hopefully in the same direction but with quite a bit of lag vis-a-vis Serbia itself. And if Belgrade wasn't so pro-EU right now, I would be much more concerned about, you know, Dogeek and the Russian factor. But since he's not gonna get any support for that from Rucic at the moment, I think it's, it might actually be good for us, good if in the same point of view of undermining in one more way his popularity. Thank you, Milada. Tarkov wanted just to add something briefly and then we will finish with you. Just a quick comment on, because I haven't said anything about you and I feel I should. Actually, I think that the reason for this happening is that actually this point here is at lower rating than our government is in Bosnia. And, you know, like that's the point. And coming back to that, I think that exactly the whole process, for instance, the Svinci process is to blame for that, you know, like in a way. And I think that actually there's an easy solution. There are three sets of amendments in the parliament at the moment that have been neglected for almost a year and a half. They haven't been voted on. And I firmly believe that at least one of them stands a chance of being voted in. The minute it's in parliament. But the EU doesn't like it. No, nor the EU nor many of our parties. But the fact is that there are three amendments in the parliament that are waiting to be voted on and nobody is willing to dare to try them out in the parliament. And they are from, HDZ is one of them. The other is from SDA, the third one is from SNSDSDS together and they are there. They're just waiting to be voted on. Okay. Thank you. I'll be brief. I'd like to just raise three points. First one is that the fact that Serbia and Croatia were present at the signing of the Dayton Peace Accord in 1995 does not make them, does not give them any right to have influence in Bosnia because the only regional aspect of the Dayton Peace Accord was the military one. And that has long been completed. My second point is that the RS is not a Serb entity. Somebody, I can't remember who said RS was a Serb entity. RS is not a Serb entity even by its constitution and Serbs do not have an entity in Bosnia. Entity is equally divided in terms of its constitution among the three ethnic groups. Unfortunately, the fourth group, the so-called others are not included in that, but they are not included in the power sharing even at the state level at the Federation as well. And as a matter of fact, I'm not as pessimistic about the actual situation, the RS because Obrad invoke history and there was a historic agreement as a matter of fact yesterday among the Bosnian parties, pro-Bosnian parties, in Potoczari instruments about the joint list for the upcoming election. And simple math will help us in seeing that it will ultimately bring at least three MPs in the state parliament from the RS to the pro-Bosnian camp. And that will bring down Mr. Dodeck's or anybody else's ability to influence things at the state level considerably. And my last point is on the EU. I think that Ed's point was actually a fairly valid one regarding the lack of presence of EU in the plenums. And there are many reasons for that. I think the main reason is that a lot of the people who have a lot of influence over the plenums are essentially not very fond of the EU to be very frank with you. And I think in a lot of ways for a good reason. The Siddish Finzi charade, I would call it show that the EU again is willing to actually stop believing in its principles the moment it crosses Bosnian borders. We saw that with the so-called police reform in 2008 when Mr. Leitchak agreed to a police reform which directly violates the European Commission on Human Rights the way that the Bosnian Constitution violates the European Commission on Human Rights. So Bosnia got the SA by violating the European Commission on Human Rights because the so-called coordinating body at the state level, the police coordinating body does not have a place for anybody else but the Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks. And at that time it was apparent to anybody that there was indirect violation of the European Commission on Human Rights. So I think the EU will regain some of its credibility and I think Bosnia absolutely should enter the EU. But the only way that's gonna happen is if the EU stands firmly by its criteria. Any kind of loosening of the criteria will lead to what we saw in the last six or seven years. And I've heard actually in 2008 when I probably criticized the EU on the police reform I heard people saying, you know, once we enter the process there are gonna be many more instruments helping us influence things in Bosnia. I guess what, six, seven years later, things are the same. I think the message that must come from the Western capitals must be of strict conditionality on everything that has to do with EU and NATO accession. Okay, thank you Ralph. And thank you all the panelists and thanks to the audience. I would just like to end this with a piece of news I read in the paper that you can think about. It is about this decision, actual agreement between the Federation and the President of Republic of Silska to split equally the profits from the electricity. So that was exported out of Bosnia which as you know we have a surplus of electricity. So in that, when it's to share profit they can agree right away. So that was something we should keep in mind when we think about Bosnia in future. So thank you all for coming. If you want to ask the panelists any questions you can come forward and I'm sure they'll be pleased to answer. Goodbye.