The one-toothed police officer

Yesterday, I had the chance to catch up with someone I met on my way over here. He works in one of the traditional crafts that are still pursued in the old town district around Baščaršija, something that his father and grandfather did too. I like to think that at least one member of the family would have been there when my Fodor 1973 guide to Yugoslavia was being written – it describes the owners of the small shops sitting in the entrance way, making their wares as the crowds amble past.

There will be more stories to tell, I hope, from this chance encounter. The craftsman has had some interesting personal experiences that say something about Bosnia in the last 20 or so years. As (ok - if) my language skills improve, I hope to be able to do those justice. For now, much of what he said (what I understood him to say) about his hopes and his disillusionment chime with things I have been hearing elsewhere, so in coming posts, I want to cover some general themes from our conversation. Today, it's the police.

My direct experiences with the police here so far have broadly been positive: a couple of traffic stops conducted efficiently, professionally, and in a more or less friendly manner*. Ten years ago, I would have been less confident that this would have been the case, in 2004 a Transparency International survey found that 15 per cent of respondents had been asked to pay a bribe to the police. There is still an impression here that police enjoy a range of 'fringe benefits' from their position of power.

The 'one-toothed officer'

There is a strong contrast between the image of a modern capital city (symbolised in Sarajevo by the proliferation of new shopping centres) and the police officer with only one tooth in his or her mouth as described by the craftsman. The latter is certainly something of an exaggeration, but it sums up a view of a lack of professionalism, and the clear sense that many people are in positions only on account of a system of patronage. There is no other explanation for their presence. A friend here encountered this directly, losing out to a candidate 15 or so places further down in the rankings and below the minimal required competence for the job in question.

Lack of competence is one concern, but equally so is the lack of independence that goes with this patronage. In many ways there is a sense here that police will turn their eyes away from the wrongs of those in power, while simultaneously using the law as a tool to help those elites pursue their own goals. The 'over-policing' of the protests is one example of this, perhaps too the use of terrorism provisions in pursuing charges, but other examples around the plenums, and around citizens' attempts to use public space to maintain a dialogue on change come up regularly in conversation.

So, while there may be effective, professional, good police officers here, there is also a structure that creates pressure for partisan policing and that creates space for incompetent and sometimes corrupt policing. While this structure may have been modified by processes of political division, and the arrival of multi-party democracy, it builds on the features present in the (second) former Yugoslavia.

State and party

In the one party state, there is very little differentiation between the party (in this case, the League of Communists) and the apparatus of state (government, civil service, etc.). To hold key posts throughout the system (such as the Presidency of a local court) would require party membership. With democratic elections in November 1990, and the rise of the three main nationalist parties (Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ; Party of Democratic Action, SDA; Serb Democratic Party, SDS), the strong link between party and state was not necessarily broken, it just fragmented somewhat.

Reading through case material that deals with the period from 1990 through to the middle of 1992, you can see that the shift in state-party relationship involves the new parties dividing up the offices among their own supporters. This was assisted by a system called 'the key' which was designed to achieve ethnic balance in a number of government-controlled posts, making sure that they matched the composition of the political unit (Republic, municipality). In municipalities where there was a division of power after democratic elections, that division often matched the ethnic composition of the area, and so there was a certain harmony between the objectives of the key and the party political appointments.

In such a system, the holders of offices owe their allegiance not to the state or to the people of that state, but to the partisan interests that put them there.

*More friendly when it was just a standard 'control' stop to check papers, less friendly when it was a ticking off for forgetting to drive with my headlights on, which is a legal requirement here.