http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old�ion=current&issue=2002-06-22&id=1980
The king of Bosnia
Paddy Ashdown must feel that power is finally his, says David
Chandler.
Why else would he sack Bosnia�s deputy prime minister?
A fortnight after taking over
as Bosnia�s international High Representative, Lord (Paddy) Ashdown claims that
he has already taught the Bosnians a valuable lesson in democratic procedures �
by sacking an elected deputy prime minister and barring him from holding any
future official public office.
Last Friday�s announcement of the
dismissal of Nikola Grabovac, the minister of finance and deputy prime minister
of the Muslim-Croat Federation (one of the two entities that makes up the
divided Bosnian state, the other being the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska),
marks a new step for the international administrators of the tiny Bosnian state.
Grabovac was not dismissed because of accusations that he was involved in war
crimes or ethnic violence, nor for advocating populist or nationalist views, nor
for opposition to policy being imposed by the international administrators.
While all these have previously been accepted as valid reasons for sacking
elected Bosnian presidents and prime ministers, the Grabovac case has broken new
ground. Grabovac was sacked and his political career ended for the educative
purpose of teaching Bosnians the virtues of ministerial responsibility and
�proper governance and transparency� in public affairs.
His dismissal
comes in the wake of the AM Sped affair, in which public money from the federal
government was misappropriated by the director of the private company. However,
as Ashdown�s office has been quick to point out, the lapse in financial controls
is not alleged to reflect on Grabovac personally. According to the chief
spokesman of the Office of the High Representative, Julian Braithwaite, �The
affair in which he is involved is not a matter of his guilt or involvement in
corruption.� The deputy prime minister has been sacked by Ashdown merely because
he is refusing to �accept final political responsibility for the actions or
inactions of his ministry and step down from this position�. The OHR claims,
�This is about political responsibility. If Bosnia is to become a part of
Europe, then it needs to adopt these sort of European standards.�
Ashdown states that Grabovac should have resigned and that this should
not be �seen as an admission of guilt� but rather as a �brave and honourable
political act�. Grabovac argues that, in Bosnia, ministerial resignations are
perceived differently. There is no law in Europe that ministers have to resign
if their department is implicated in a scandal of some sort. Recent history
shows that while some ministers (like the Dutch) might be happy to resign
despite having no personal responsibility, others (like the British) can remain
long after their sell-by date. The fact is that ministerial responsibility is a
question for governments, political parties and, in the final analysis, the
public via the ballot-box to decide. It seems bizarre that developing democracy
in Bosnia could be seen to involve sacking elected representatives on the basis
that they do not live up to some alleged �European standards� which it would be
impossible to formalise. It is hardly a lesson in democracy to dismiss elected
ministers on such flimsy justification.
As Chris Patten, the European
Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, recently said of Ashdown in the Bosnian press:
�He is a man with an extraordinary career in British politics�, adding that he
was �recognised as a man full of energy, who always has a vision�. Of course,
the notable point about Ashdown�s career was the fact that his political
opinions consistently failed to appeal to the vast majority of British people,
who apparently found his �energy� and �vision� something they would rather do
without.
For the Bosnians, the problem may well be that Ashdown�s years
of frustration with his failure to gain a position of political power in Britain
make him an unlikely candidate for rolling back the powers of the international
administration as Bosnia gradually prepares itself for self-government and the
eventual end of the �transitional� protectorate. This danger was highlighted in
his inaugural speech when he argued that Bosnia�s transition to self-government
involved more than a set of administrative and structural reforms. Ashdown feels
that the key question is leadership:
No state has ever been built � no people have ever prospered � unless they can produce from among themselves leaders who have a vision that transcends faction, who have the ability to put the interest of the country first, and who have the courage to take the risks necessary to lead. Bosnia and Hercegovina has so far not produced enough leaders of this sort.
Cometh the hour, cometh the Lord. Like David Beckham for England, Paddy Ashdown clearly feels that the leader whom the Bosnians have lacked has now arrived. He has made it clear that he is not interested in governing through political consensus:
I have concluded that there are two ways I can make my decisions. One is with a tape measure, measuring the precise equidistant position between three sides. The other is by doing what I think is right for the country as a whole. I prefer the second of these. So when I act, I shall seek to do so in defence of the interests of all the people of Bosnia and Hercegovina, putting their priorities first.
Ashdown�s approach to Bosnia � his belief that Bosnian political parties and
the political process are irrelevant now that he has the governor�s post; the
conceit that he is a better judge of what is right and in the interests of the
Bosnian people than their elected representatives; and his moral mission to set
standards that exist nowhere outside of an idealised view of Western politics �
means that he could well discredit the whole idea of Western bureaucrats
bringing democracy to the Balkans. Grabovac could soon be looking back and
counting himself lucky to be out of the mess of Bosnian politics.
Dr
David Chandler lectures in international relations at Brunel University and has
written widely on the Balkans, including Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton
and From Kosovo to Kabul: Human Rights and International Intervention, both
published by Pluto Press.
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