The demonstrations that took place throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina in February “indicated with startling clarity that an under-performing political establishment had finally exhausted the patience of the people,” High Representative Valentin Inzko said today, adding that “increasingly, the country’s best chance of recovery is being located not within the narrow confines of the political parties but within the broader spectrum of the population as a whole.”
The High Representative was speaking at an international conference on European integration and the Western Balkans, organised in Prague by the Foreign Ministry of the Czech Republic.
Discussing “the inevitability of change”, he said, “is appropriate and necessary because there must now be a new way of doing politics after these elections that delivers the concrete results the people demand. This means politicians spending less time taking care of their patronage system and more time putting in place conditions for opening of new jobs, especially for young people”.
“The tide of popular dissatisfaction remains extraordinarily high,” he said. “The new authorities can stand against the tide or they can seek to move with the tide and try to leverage popular dissatisfaction into momentum for political and economic progress. Realism as much as optimism leads me to believe that the arguments for change are more compelling than the arguments for continuing to do things as they have been done till now.”