Are Mostar citizens ready for partnership with government officials?

Despite the fact that the people of Mostar are still living in a city which suffers from a troubled past, they are now searching for a means to communicate with their government officials in the hope of getting their most basic municipal needs met. Mostar is currently adjusting to the Office of the High Representative’s (OHR) decision to impose the unification of the six municipalities into one. Since citizens may be unfamiliar with this new governmental structure, communication between the citizens and their local authorities can become unclear and the information the citizens require to satisfy their needs can easily become lost. It was for this reason that the OSCE Mis sion to Bosnia and Herzegovina decided to conduct the first comprehensive survey in a unified Mostar in early June, 2005. Marina Zhunich, the Democratization Officer for the OSCE Regional Centre in Mostar, explained, “We have two goals. Our first goal is to set-up a list of priorities of the problems that the city officials need to work on which will be based on the responses from the survey. The second goal is to lay the groundwork for a “partnership” between the citizens and their authorities” Mostar´s old bridge has long been a symbol of unity of the city´s people. The OSCE Mission to BiH trained 14 volunteers from three local civil society NGOs, Altruist, Sumejja, and Graditelji Mira, on the methods to create a questionnaire that was used to interview 559 r andomly chosen citizens of Mostar. The training also focused on how to scientifically administer the survey in order to avoid eliciting biased responses. The results were indeed promising and disprove the image that the people of Mostar are complacent and unwilling to become directly involved with the local authorities in working toward a better life. “Only five years ago the picture the media displayed was quite gloomy, but now we have real ground to say this is not so, citizens are ready to be active, but you have to mobilize them,” confirmed Zunich. Armel Sukovic from the youth NGO, Graditelji Mira, added, “People really want something to be done. They really want to get involved. Mostar is the land of opportunity; there is nothing here you cannot achieve, but you have to work hard for it.” The results of the survey show that over 93 percent of those questioned in Mostar believe that the unemployment rate is the most important issue facing them with health and social protection coming a close second. Street names were considered the least important matter by almost half of respondents. Close to 70 percent believe they can influence the problems they face by participating in their religious communities and citizen associations. Surprisingly, only around 3 percent responded that they were not interested in any kind of civic participation at all; possibly pointing toward their lack of faith in the democratic system. “Nothing has been accomplished so far between citizens and their authorities. I don’t think it is possible to have improvement in the future,” said Adnan Pala, a waiter at a res taurant in Mostar’s old town district. When asked ‘Who should solve the problems facing the people of Mostar?’ the majority believe that the local municipalities were responsible for solving these problems. Unfortunately, this popular response illustrates the lack of knowledge the citizens have about their government institutions and their delegated authority over specific issues. Zhunich said “What the survey showed us was the lack of communication and co-ordination between citizens, the NGOs that work on their behalf, and the authorities. This survey revealed the gap between NGO’ s and the citizens. With several hundred NGOs registered in Mostar, the people are still frustrated and dissatisfied with their level of involvement and participa tion.” Zhunich also added, “The lack of communication is the most significant problem but we see this as an opportunity to motivate the local authorities to launch an information campaign.” Such a campaign is needed to enlighten the public on the specific responsibilities of the municipal government and the cantonal-level government so that their efforts to work with their author ities are not made in vain. The OSCE Mission to BiH hopes that the government authorities may utilize the information that was gathered from the survey to take action against these problems. Its Democratisation Department sponsored a roundtable event on 7 July, 2005 so that both the leaders of the NGO community and local officials could discuss the results of the survey conducted a month earlier. Regrettably, some people believe that the local authorities may rely on the complacency of the citizens of Mostar in order to retain their political offices. Toni Pehar, President of the Regional Centre of International Forum “Bosnia” for Mostar, who attended the roundtable, believed that even if the citizens were to make attempts towards becoming active in civil society, the authorities would continue to ignore the people’s demand despite the local authorities’ alleged satisfaction with the survey results. Pehar stated, “I don’t believe that the people will take action since that is not in the interests of the authorities; if citizens had more ways to influence authorities than the authorities may lose its power over certain issues. It is obvious that the people at the roundtable have their doubts about the positive attitudes of the local authorities.” This distrustful attitude may consume many of the people of Mostar, but if the majority of the people work against this cynicism and try to co-operate with their local authorities, societal problems may be solved if the proper mechanisms are in place. It is for this reason that the OSCE Mission to BiH is planning future activities involving the survey so that the mechanisms can be developed for this partnership between the citizens of Mostar and their government officials. Miro Rozic, governance advisor for the OSCE Regional Centre in Mostar, concluded, “The roundtable helped establish a good relationship with the local government and the civil society sector. The survey results show us that the municipalities and the citizens are ready for a partnership.”