The same day as The Real Izetbegovic, Izetbegovic’s former colleague in the Bosnian Presidium, Nenad Kecmanovic. published his obituary of the not-so-dearly departed Bosnian Muslim leader in the Serbian weekly NIN. The full article, availabe in Serbian on NIN’s subscriber site, reveals much about Izetbegovic and his organization, both good and bad. Politically, hovewer, Kecmanovic cannot forgive him:
“His skill in parlor politics that kept him on top for over a decade was inversely proportional to his catastrophic political judgments.”
“One can only say that he destroyed every possibility that the former Yugoslav heartland, through a consensus of three equal peoples and democratic agreement of its citizens, could eventually become a sovereign state.”
Here’s a few more choice passages:
– “Evil tongues say that Izetbegovic became ‘the first Bosniak’ by taking Zulfikarpasic’s money, Fikret Abdic’s votes, and Hasan Cengic’s mosque party cells, claiming Silajdzic’s diplomatic triumphs, and borrowing ideas from Filipovic – then purged them all, and surrounded himself with anonymous mediocrities from the party bureaucracy.”
– Izetbegovic revealed himself as a “man who callously deceives, cheats, falsifies and fabricates.”
– “Did he think some sort of higher religious mission or national goal in his vision allow him to use even the most uncivilized means in their realization?”
When his party’s representatives staged a coup in the parliament to illegaly declare independence, despite Serb opposition, “that night, on behalf of the SDA – which was backed by 90 percent of Muslim voters – Izetbegovic told his Serb neighbors, and inditectly the Croats too, openly and definitely that their equal rights will be respected only when and insofar they [the Muslims] found it expedient.”