Šta nam govore investicije Turske u BiH ?

Posjeta Predsjednika Republike Turske Erdogana, izazvala je burne reakcije u bh.javnosti. Jedni su gledali na ovo kao jeftinu predizbornu kampanju Stranke Demokratske Akcije i udaljavanje BiH od EU, dok su drugi na ovaj događaj gledali pozitivno, predstavljajući ga kao samo još jedan dokaz velikog prijateljstva BiH sa Republikom Turskom.

Mnogi koji su se protivili dolasku a i generalno se protive miješanjem Turske u domaću politiku Bosne i Hercegovine su kao za glavni dokaz predstavljali listu investitora u BiH, na kojem se Turska nalazi na 11. mjestu. Sa statistikama nema ništa sporno osim da to više govori o ekonomiji BiH nego o investicijama iz Turske. Kao što svi znamo ono što zaustavlja napredak bh. ekonomije je prevelika birokratija, fiskalni nameti i visoki porezi. To su stvari koje bi odbile svakog investitora, pa tako i same turske investitore. MMF i Svjetska Banka su u svojim posjetama i analizama često upozoravale političare da će se morati činiti konkretniji koraci da bi se poboljšala poslovna klima u BiH. Do toga još nije došlo tako da je pitanje budućnosti da li će se učiniti ikakvi pomaci na tom polju. Na ovaj problem nisu samo ukazivali međunarodni kreditori, nego i razna udruženja, poslodavci i domaći ekonomisti.

Turski investitori bi vjerujem rado ulagali, ali kao i svaki investitor, morate mu stvoriti odgovarajući ambijent za razvoj njegovog biznisa, a na kraju to predstavlja i veći broj radnih mjesta i ekonomskog razvitka.  Iz navedenih razloga ne treba gledati Tursku kao partnera koji slabo ulaže u BiH, nego kao partnera kojem se treba stvoriti poslovna klima da bi te investicije cvjetale.

How can I leave my homeland when I have too much to gain but also much to lose?

When you look at Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina you can read that there is a lot of unemployment, nationalism, tensions and a bad political situation. All you hear is true and people my age and other generations see their life outside of it. A very big number of them is already living in Germany, Austria, USA and other countries. Staying here is seen as being crazy or unrealistically patriotic. But what keeps us from going somewhere else?

As I sad if you go to countries with a high standard of living you have much to gain. Live without worries, can build a family, have a nice car, home and so on. You don’t have to fear war on criminals. That is of course the life everybody wants. I value peace, freedom and security over anything and that sounds like paradise to me. I visited some towns like Berlin and Prague and I must say I liked it very much there, and I could live there without problems. That is the situation when you look at the economic facts, but what is the situation when you look at the social aspects like finding friends, building a family, integration in society and so on. There people from the Balkans have much to lose. We are known as nations which love to socialize, to party, family and friend gatherings and we tend to have strong bond with our neighbours. Thing become very hard then, as these countries represent new surroundings and a new culture. This is also a time of negative image of immigrants, especially those from parts of the world which are underdeveloped, so people from the West are being cold to them. Also most of the people who fled the war and now live in the West, see their neighbours as cold, “working too much” or being rude. And most of them miss drinking coffee at any part of the day with their friends and the Bosnian humor. These thing lead to the isolation of a person. Even many of my friends can’t imagine themselves living somewhere else.

And what about me ? Well I speak German and English very good, and I can see myself living there. But what hurts the most ? Well, I will leave Sarajevo the city who has a soul, and so I leave my best friends, the memories, the hurt, the happiness, football(soccer) playing with my friends, watching it with my friends, the parties and many things. Even tough this place sometimes reminds me of sadness and  loneliness that I have been trough, it is the place I have learned the most and for that I am very thankful. But things that would break my heart is the thing that I would rarely see my niece ( sisters daughter) and that I would grow my family without my parents and my sister. But that is the things you have to risk and that is why leaving Bosnia means to lose too much.

 

 

Nedostatak znanja o ekonomiji u bosanskohercegovačkom društvu

Pozdrav,

Jedna bolest koja je rasprostranjena na čitavom Balkanu i od koje boluju većina stanovnika ovog područja je ekonomska neobrazovanost. Ako se već pitate šta to predstavlja, to vam je kada narod nema poznavanja o osnovnim zakonima ekonomije i ima iracionalne finansijske odluke. Ukratko ću objasniti, koji su to primjeri i šta je dovelo do toga. Uzeti ću za primjere slučajeve iz moje države Bosne i Hercegovine

Primjer 1: 

Obično kada želite imati djecu, znate da će to automatski biti skuplje, da morate imati krova nad glavom, svaki dan hranu na stolu, fina primanja, opremu za bebe, igračke itd. To morate imati prije nego što stupite u sami brak. Eh pa u BiH se gubi ta logika. Na našim portalima a ponekad i na TV-u možete vidjeti mnoge priloge koji govore o porodicama koje imaju po 3-4 djece ali im fale osnovne stvari kao što su krov nad glavom i primanja kojima bi izdržavali to sve. Svako bi pomislio ” Pa što uopšte ulaziti u brak i osnovati porodicu kada nemate osnovnih stvari za to?”. Sigurno da neki ljudi su u takvim situacijama zbog faktora kao što su bolest, invaliditet, nesreće itd. Na drugoj strani to su ljudi koji se nisu željeli obrazovati, odbijali pronaći posao ili su jednostavno očekivali da će Bog ili država dati.

Primjer 2:

Slučaj malina. Prije par godina mnogi poljoprivrednici su bili ohrabrivani da krenu uzgajati maline budući da su bili povoljni uvjeti za njihovo uzgajanje a i cijene na tržištu su obećavale profit. Ekonomski zakon ponude i potražnje kaže da ako je ponuda nekog proizvoda prevelika, cijene tog proizvoda će pasti. To su poljoprivrednici trebali uzeti u obzir kada su krenuli u ovaj poduhvat. Sada su cijene malina niske, i naravno poljoprivrednici se žale i traže pomoć države.

Primjer 3:

Zabluda koja je prisutna i u mnogim razvijenim državama kod socijalista i radikalnih ljevičara je da sve što država daje besplatno. Pogotovo obrazovanje i zdravstvo. Naravno i ovo je debela laž. Kao što svi znamo javni sektor je finansiran od strane poreznih obveznika koji redovno plaćaju svoje poreze iz razloga što ne žele imati problema sa inspekcijom ( koja je naravno rigorozna ) ili iz nekih patriotskih razloga. Dakle porezom  i taksama se uzima novac građana i tako se raspodjeljuje u zdravstvo, obrazovanje, komunalne usluge, socijalna davanja itd. Što nam govori da zapravo ono što država daje ima svoju cijenu i to vam važi i za države kao Švedsku i Dansku.

Problem u Bosni i Hercegovini je što je taj javni sektor glomazan i jede privatni kroz glupe regulacije, veliku birokratiju i ogromne poreze. Pored toga monopol javnih firmi, krađe u tim firmama, prevelike plate političara i javnih službenika, agencije koje ne postoje i još mnogi razlozi su zašto je bh.ekonomija u padu. Mora se još uzeti i uhljebljenički mentalitet naših građana koji bi primali platu ali da ne rade i kojima je san posao u državnoj firmi.

Sa jedne strane ovo je krivica generalne neobrazovanosti naroda, a sa druge ostatak socijalističkog mentaliteta, gdje je država bila glavni skrbnik dok je u nekim firmama bilo dosta tehnološkog viška.

Šta raditi ? 

Kao neko ko je fiskalno konzervativan, odnosno neko ko zagovara minimalnu ulogu države, privatizaciju i nizak porez, smatram da je njegovanje takve kulture jedini način da se bh.ekonomija oporavi i da investicije počnu sve više da dolaze u ovu zemlju. Naravno za promjenu svijesti treba puno, ali svakako da bi mogući bankrot ove države mogao značiti da će do takve promijene  i doći.

 

My generation in Bosnia and Herzegovina – the generation born in the year 1995

Hello once again

Today my text will be about the problems, the future and the characteristics of my generation, which is born in 1995, or in other words, the generation born at the end of the war. It is interesting to talk about this topic as we are 21/22 years old now, and most of the elders are seeing as the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Most of us were born during the last months of war or even when the in the months the peace negotiations were held ( October / November) so that explains the first burden of our generation. Most of our parents, grandparents, sister or brothers were affected by it in a way ( have PTSD, lost it all or got killed). This is a great burden to us as the war changes or perspective on other ethnic groups, religions, communist regime of Yugoslavia and the whole word. It changes the ways we approach these things.

The characteristics: When someone would ask me to describe our generation in one word I would say that it is pluralistic and that you can find a lot of different people. You have artists, book-worms, rebels, douchebags, intellectuals and so on. On the political side you have rightist, leftist, Islamists, liberals, communist, social democrats and so on. This also very depends on the war and the opinions about Yugoslavia. There are the more open ones and the more conservative ones or the ones who love Bosnia and see its future in it and the ones who don’t like it and only want to go away to the West. I would also say that we are very spoiled, because we have more opportunities, better technology and didn’t have to fight like our parents. We don’t see education as something good, but as something boring, which is the main reason a good percent turn to criminal activities.  This makes thing complicated because most do not see thing critically, but trough emotions. We like to complain about thing a lot, but dont do anything to change them. Right now I see us as the generation that can make a better Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Problems: There are some problems that are well-known as unemployment, corruption, no practical part in the education and so on. Things that are also very common are that the war made us nationalist. A lot of my generation think that way, and don’t even want to be in the same room with a person of other ethnicity. That is also often pressured by the community. Political parties are here without plans  for the improvement of the political system or economy, and you get the picture that they use young people for their interests and not for the future. Some see the past in an idealistic naive way and some also see the present in a naive way. Young people who try to change something are often laughed at.

What does the future hold for us?

One philosopher said that the future is a mystery, and present is a gift that you should use. As someone who firmly believes that good education builds a society and a functioning state. Besides that I am in a way optimistic about our future. Here people would call you a lunatic because of these two statements. I believe that my generation can make better decisions than our elders did, and that we can make a prosperous Bosnia and Herzegovina. To achieve that there has to be a harsh self-reflection on our self-sabotage and our mentality.

Julian Assange and Edward Snowden – the meaning of these two people in todays world

As  I was getting more and more interested in politics, the NSA and Wikileaks affair was in the news everyday, and more and more people were talking about it. As a young person in  high school  I had a lot of interest in this story. Besides that, these two people were in my opinion heroes of the modern world.

When you hear about surveillance programs and spying on innocent citizens in the name of “security and democracy”, you think that is some kind of fiction and something unrealistic. Assange and Snowden show that these thing are real, and that they are a real threat to the world. It is also important that they showed the real face behind the war on terror and the US campaign in the Middle East(the video of US soldiers shooting reporters, if you are interested you can find it on YouTube). These leaks included many other things like corruption, money laundering, wrongdoings of corporations, drug trafficking and many other things. Why were the issues of invasion of privacy and surveillance of citizens the most shocking to the public ? Well, as we all know privacy is for all people a sacred thing, a place they go to when they want to hide from their problems or a place to be themselves. This meant that corporations, governments and powerful individuals  had informations about what people like, their conversations with their friends, their secrets, their fears and so on. This means that these institutions can blackmail you for disobeying and so destroy your life by showing your secrets. For me, this was the most freighting thing I have heard in my whole life. This is playing with human lifes and seems like Orwell and Huxley were right in their books. The funny thing is that the countries spying were liberal democracies like the USA, France, Germany and UK. The spying of citizens by autocratic regimes interested nobody. Now, people in liberal democracies see how vulnerable they are and what their governments are doing behind the veil. All of this was shown to the world by Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, who are both now living outside their countries and being hunted by the US government. Assange a hacker from Australia, and Snowden an ex-worker in the NSA both gave up comfortable lifes, their security and freedom for an ideal. An ideal of a free world, where nobody can steal your secrets, your intimacy and can’t play with your life behind a monitor. Why did they risk all of that instead of living like everybody else?. This shows that there are people ready to give up their lifes for a more humane and free world.

In my opinion these two give me hope that there are still people who care about others which are miles away. People ready to risk it all for the security of others. How these two cases will end  I can not tell you, but I hope this will raise the awareness about our  vulnerability and the ways technology has exposed us. In the end I sincerely hope these two will win in their fight.

 

“Zbogom Bosno, odoh ja u Sarajevo” – značenje ove rečenice

Pozdrav i ovaj put jedan tekst na bosanskom jeziku.

Nedavno sam na predavanju na svom fakultetu čuo od profesora jednu interesantnu rečenicu. Kao što sam naslov ovog teksta sugeriše ta rečenica je “Zbogom Bosno, odoh ja u Sarajevo”. Profesor tog predmeta je govorio u kontekstu ratnih dešavanja u Sarajevu 90-tih godina prošlog stoljeća i o tome kako je Sarajevo predstavlja drugi svijet u odnosu na ostatak Bosne i Hercegovine.

Kada prvi put čujete ovakvu rečenicu, može se slobodno reći da zvuči pretenciozno i da dolazi iz usta jednog umišljenog sarajlije. Sarajlije znaju biti umišljenje, ali gledajući političke, ekonomske i kulturne faktore u to vrijeme a i sada, možemo reći da  ova rečenica ima istine u sebi. Sarajevo je za vrijeme Jugoslavije bilo jedno od regionalnih centara na Balkanu, posebno kada je u pitanju kultura. Takvo je stanje i sada, kada Sarajevo ima svoj film festival i još mnoge kulturne događaje. Većina studenata iz daljih i siromašnijih krajeva Bosne i Hercegovine dolaze na Univerzitet u Sarajevo, kako bi stekli obrazovanje, diplomu i eventualno bolje šanse za posao ( koji također žele naći u Sarajevu). Politički gledajući, sve bitnije političke institucije su u Sarajevu.  Ekonomski gledano, najbolji životni standard u BiH je u Sarajevu, zajedno sa najvećim platama, što dokazuje da je Sarajevo, uz Zagreb i Beograd, jedan od skupljih gradova u regionu. Tu bi sliku dobili kada bi vidjeli izbor kafića, restorana, trgovačkih kuća i noćnog života.( zato je retorika nekih političara koje Sarajevo prozivaju kao “džamahiriju” itd. bez ikakvih dokaza i praktično pada u vodu). Pored toga, da ste turista i da razgledate Sarajevo prvi put u svom životu, pomislili bi da  Bosna i Hercegovina “cvjeta” i da je ekonomija u stalnom rastu. Bili bi iznenađeni nasmijanim ljudima, otvorenošću, sadržajem i opuštenim načinom života kojim se živi u Sarajevu (poznato ispijanje kafa po čitav dan odnosno “čejfovanje” ili “merak”). Zadivila bi vas i atmosfera za vrijeme Ramazana, koju bi teško mogao opisati, osim da taj period Sarajevu daje neku magiju i nešto specijalno što se osjeti u zraku. Naravno, ovo je ona lijepa strana Sarajeva, kao i svaki drugi grad, bio on metropola ili ne, ima svoju lošu stranu, o kojoj ću pisati drugom prilikom. Na drugoj strani, kada odete van Sarajeva i posjetite druge dijelove Bosne i Hercegovine, slika se drastično mijenja. Tada vidite zapuštena naselja, lošu infrastrukturu, zapuštene ljude, borbu za preživljavanje, ukratko loš životni standard. Ovo se desilo zbog  faktora kao što su rat  i činjenica da se najviše novca ulaže u Sarajevo, dok manje općine tako ostaju uskraćene. Tu se već dobija totalno suprotna slika i stvorite mišljenje da  su ljudi u Bosni i Hercegovini zatvoreni, veoma konzervativni, pesimistični i da želje za životom nemaju. Ima tu par svijetlih i dobrih primjera kako su se neke općine digle iz toga, i tako je npr. najuspješnija ekonomska općina u Bosni i Hercegovini, općina Tešanj, koja ima samo 50 000 stanovnika. Zbog takve ekonomske situacije, nema potrebe da vas iznenade stavovi i razmišljanja tih ljudi, koji su izrazito ksenofobični i nacionalistički. Za te ljude ne postoji neka vizija i vjera u bolju budućnost.

Nema dileme da je Sarajevo kao grad nešto posebno. On predstavlja dragulj Bosne i Hercegovine, ali gledati kao  da predstavlja realno stanje u Bosni i Hercegovini je veoma naivno i opasno. Vođenje politike u kojem jedan grad i njegovo stanovništvo ima veće privilegije, bez obzira na stanje u kojem se nalaze ljudi u drugim dijelovima Bosne i Hercegovine, je opasno jer stvara veće razdore između ljudi i ekonomski disbalans. Na političkoj strani, to ponovo otvara priču o stvaranju “fildžan države” što je možda najopasnija i najdestruktivnija ideja koja može postojati. Zato treba prestati misliti da je Bosna i Hercegovina od Ilidže do Baščaršije, nego da je ona i puno dalje od toga, i da tim mjestima treba također pomoći da se izgrade.

How I see politics ?

Hello

My interest in the world of politics started in my 2nd grade in High school. I was researching about the opinions on the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina ( as my country experienced a horrible war 25 years ago.). As I heard some of these opinions, which were mostly the opinions of professionals, I was frightened. I began to see how politics affects every one of us. I started thinking about this every day, about how the future will be, what kind of Bosnia will I leave to my children, and how will I live. After that, my interest in politics was bigger and bigger, so I decided to study Political Sciences, were I am now. Still. I believe in a better Bosnia and Herzegovina, with  good life and freedom. Some people think and would say that this is naive.

I see myself as centre-right. I am supportive of free-markets, secularism, high religious rights, tradition, integration, globalisation, solidarity and protection of privacy. I also see Bosnia and Herzegovina built on these principles. I strongly oppose military intervention, totalitarianism, invasion of privacy, war, imposition and  fascism. I am also a strong anti-communist ( which also means anti-socialist). The party I mostly identify within Europe are the British Conservatives or Tories.

I see politics as a social phenomena which can give the best and worst things to people. It contains every human action, from the most evil to the most noble ones. People often think that politics have to be moral and ethical, but that is a big lie I refuse to believe. Politics is never moral or ethical, it represents the playing with the fate of people. People associate politics with lies, blood and suffering, but with good, educated and moral people, politics can give a lot of good things, which is seen in countries like Canada, Germany, Switzerland and many others.

I know there will be a lot of people who will disagree with me, but for politics and democracy that’s normal, and even better for a healthy society .