BITTER POLITICAL STANDOFF OVER STOLAC SECONDARY

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 SARAJEVO 001260 SENSITIVE SIPDIS STATE FOR EUR/SCE E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: BK PGOV PHUM SCUL SUBJECT: BITTER POLITICAL STANDOFF OVER STOLAC SECONDARY SCHOOL ¶1. (SBU) Summary: With Bosnia-Herzegovina's local elections looming in October, the future of the Stolac Secondary School in Herzegovina-Neretva Canton remains the political hot button of choice for local and cantonal politicians looking to energize their electorate and mobilize voters. The arrangement of separate Croat and Bosniak curricula within one school that had been in place for the last few years collapsed earlier in the year, with all sides decrying the use of students and teachers as pawns in their rivals' machinations. The DCM an Poloff visited Stolac and met with various part officials to impress upon them the importance th embassy placed on a speedy resolution of the siuation and to hear how the different sides envisioed resolving the stalemate. End summary. Stolac Secondary School -- Nationalist Battleground -------------- -------------- ¶2. (SBU) The Stolac Secondary School was registered in 1995 -- an exclusively Croat school functioning by statue according to the Croat curriculum. The Bosniak secondary school in Stolac at the time functioned by statute as a branch of the Mostar gymnasium, but when the Bosniak and Croat elements of the Mostar gymnasium unified in 2003, the Stolac branch was left out of the system, and since that time has functioned in an unregulated status. It developed an unofficial relationship with the Stolac Croatian school, whose director signed and stamped the graduation certificates of graduating Bosniak students so that they could apply to and be accepted by universities. This unofficial system broke down in 2008 as a result of the convergence of two main factors: growing pressure nationwide to adopt long-term, regulated solutions to the national education system that adequately addressed the rights and needs of students of all nationalities; and the approach of municipal elections in 2008 that has encouraged political parties to find issues that will spark greater interest in their campaigns. As the 2007-2008 academic year wound down, the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton Minister of Culture, Education and Sports (and SDA member) Esad Dzelilovic moved to ban registration in the Stolac school (the Croat school) and payment of salaries to the teachers in an effort to force the adoption of a new statute for the school that would address both Croat and Bosniak students. At the same time Zdenko Milanovic, the director of the school (and close friend of the HDZ-BiH party mayor of Stolac, Stjepan Boskovic) refused to sign and stamp the diplomas of the approximately 160 Bosniak students graduating. The Crisis Escalates -------------- ¶3. (SBU) The individuals affected by the situation thus far may have found ways to work around the legal standoff. Students, theoretically prevented from enrolling in universities without stamped diplomas, were taking Bosnia-Herzigovinan university entrance exams after the schools found alternate means of verifying graduation, and the students may ultimately be allowed to enroll. However, it is possible their lack of certified diplomas could be problems for them down the road. Teachers at the Stolac school continued to be paid as of July 2008. At the same time, however, the political standoff continued to escalate. The Minister of Education, apparently cooperating on this issue with HDZ-1990, appointed a new director for the school, Miro Sutalo, as the previous director, Milanovic's mandate had expired. Milanovic, however, disappeared with the keys to the school and the official stamps, and sent away on vacation all other employees with keys to the facility. The Minister of Education and the Director-Designate Sutalo planned a meeting at the school Monday morning, 28 July 2008, and threatened to use police force to open the schools and make Milanovic surrender the keys. Against this backdrop we traveled to Stolac to better understand each side's perspective on the issue, express the U.S. government's concern over the lingering standoff, and urge all sides to resolve the situation expeditiously and without using the students as political pawns in the October elections. SDA: Moving Past Repatriation to Integration in Stolac -------------- -------------- ¶4. (SBU) Zlatko Hadziomerovic -- SDA Stolac President and SARAJEVO 00001260 002 OF 004 mayoral candidate: Hadziomerovic observed that the problem with the Stolac school was only one example of the problems in Stolac returning Bosniaks face. Despite the international community's efforts to encourage Bosniaks to return to the town, the Bosniak population remained well shy of its pre-war levels, and Croats remained in the majority, as they had been in Stolac before the war. There had been extremely limited success re-integrating Bosniaks into civil society, for example giving them places on managing boards of municipal organizations or adopting street names that represented non-Croat peoples. Even today there was no treatment for Bosniaks at the town's medical clinic, but Bosniaks had been forced to set up their own health center in a private residence. Hadziomerovic also commented that what little success had been achieved came only through pressure from the U.S. embassy and the Office of the High Representative (OHR), and that respect of the latter's influence was diminishing among Croats as more people came to believe the High Representative would not exercise the office's power to remove or punish transgressors. Hadziomerovic stated pressure from canton level offices on local officials produced no results at all, and that in fact one aspect of the current standoff over the school was a function of the struggle for power between local and regional governments. Hadziomerovic described SDA Stolac and HDZ-1990's efforts to come up with an acceptable compromise, but believed these efforts would be thwarted by HDZ-BiH without outside (international) intervention. The DCM promised to follow up on this meeting with the OHR. A Frosty Reception: How Soon Are You Leaving? -------------- - ¶5. (SBU) Mladen Boskovic: Stolac HDZ-BiH President: The mood in Boskovic's office was decidedly cooler. After we introduced the purpose of the U.S. embassy visit to Stolac, one of Boskovic's initial observations was that the main factor contributing to the problem of the Stolac school was that people who do not reside in Stolac (apparently meaning the canton government) want to meddle in Stolac's affairs and use the school as a political issue. He then offered his interpretation of the chronology and the facts of the situation, laying out an argument that he was simply enforcing the letter of the law and that Minister Dzelilovic had forced the current standoff by interfering in local politics. He stressed that the whole affair began when Dzelilovic had refused to allow students finishing the eighth year of primary school to register for the ninth grade - the first year of secondary school. Boskovic believes that the status quo supports him - there is currently only a legal statute for the Croat school. While he may privately recognize that ultimately there will have to be two schools, he appears determined to hold as tightly as possible to the current situation to extract the most favorable outcome possible from any ultimate compromise. He expressed strong doubts that any such long-term solution would be reached prior to the election, which may in fact be all he and/or his political bosses, are after. In general terms Boskovic welcomed the embassy's support in forestalling efforts to transfer power - and especially control of revenues - from local to canton governmets. He also made a statement embassy officials ave heard repeatedly from Croat politicians, tha Croatians are losing rights within Bosnia-Herzeovina at all levels except the local level. Whenasked specifically what he believed the future held for the Stolac Secondary School, Boskovic would only state that his government would follow the letter of the law. The Next Step Forward for Change at the Stolac School? -------------- -------------- ¶6. (SBU) Miro Sutalo - Stolac Secondary School Headmaster-Designate: Sutalo is a HDZ-1990 supporter who apparently has a history of conflicts with Mayor Boskovic, going back at least to the Mayor's decision not to fund the town's mixed Bosniak-Croat basketball club which Sutalo coaches. Sutalo argued that the current conflict was begun by the Mayor after Minister Dzelilovic's late 2007 intervention. The Minister attempted to dismiss Headmaster Milanovic and seek the municipality's input in creating a board to meet and discuss ways to statutorily adjust the status of the Stolac Secondary School. Sutalo claimed the previous headmaster and the mayor had worked actively to SARAJEVO 00001260 003 OF 004 block these adjustments. Sutalo ran down a litany of instances where he believed the mayor abused his position and influence to stack important municipal boards with friends, relatives, and fellow HDZ-BiH officials. Sutalo also described how Mayor Boskovic steadfastly refused to support any assistance project if it included benefits for Bosniaks - even if it also benefited Croats. He listed several examples totaling hundreds of thousands of Euros of foreign aid programs for the Stolac school which either the mayor had canceled because the program would be shared by the Bosniak students, or because the donors withdrew the project funding because the school's regulatory issues had not been resolved. ¶7. (SBU) Sutalo declared his determination to stamp the diplomas of the graduating Bosniak students and to regulate the status of the Bosniak curriculum and teachers by adopting a new statue modeled on the &Mostar Gymnasium Model8 that would maintain the separate curricula but combine the two programs under a joint school administration. He claimed to have the backing of the Canton Prime Minister as well as a fair bit of public support for this move. However, first he had to get the former headmaster to turn over the keys and seals of the school. He hoped to convince Milanovic to comply, but short of that would need to get the police to confiscate these items. Fearing that police intervention would make Milanovic a martyr, he suggested a third option would be for OHR to officially &remove8 Milanovic from his office and oblige him to comply. Cooperation at the Canton Level -------------- ¶8. (SBU) Srecko Boras - Herzegovina-Neretva Canton Prime Minister, HDZ-1990: Despite disagreements with Minister Dzelilovic over issues relating to other parts of the minister's portfolio, Prime Minister Boras stated that he and minister Dzelilovic were in agreement on the necessity of working together on a solution to the situation in Stolac that would address both the needs of the students and faculty at the school, as well as fix the problem statutorily. He expressed his belief that the situation in Stolac would be resolved, either by creating two schools with separate statutes and separate curricula using one building; or a single statutory school with a joint administration and separate curricula. He did not elaborate on the means by which the situation would be resolved, but appeared to believe that the position of HDZ-1990 and SDA in Stolac had both popular support as well as the stronger legal basis, and that more importantly this was an issue which every other areas had already been forced to address and had in fact addressed one way or the other. We stressed our hope that the solution would not lead to entrenchment of further divisions in BiH, noting in that vein the &two schools under one roof8 should be the least preferred option and again stressed that whatever the outcome the students must not be made the victims. Comments -------------- ¶9. (SBU) The Stolac Secondary School debate typifies many of the local issues in Bosnia-Herzegovina, with local officials struggling to minimize interference by higher levels of government--unless they need their support--and one ethnic group pitted against another unless there is an opportunity to collaborate against another party to score political points. This trip also underscored how important local issues are to voters and politicians: despite the recent arrest of Radovan Karadzic, not one official brought this up, but talked instead about the school or other strictly local problems. HDZ-BiH appears to have be the group that first decided to politicize the school issue in an election year, perhaps due to concerns that HDZ 1990 is growing in popularity and out of a need to find some issue that will mobilize the Croat voting population in a year when there is not much else for the mayor and party president to point to in terms of achievements. Experts expect Croat voting to be down throughout the country, so every vote will count. As the new headmaster noted, there are twenty-six schools that had to deal with the question of adjusting their statutory mandates to address the issue of the two SARAJEVO 00001260 004 OF 004 nationalities, and only the Stolac school had failed to do so, hence the pressure from the canton government to regulate the Stolac school. Boskovic's observation that it will be extremely difficult to craft a long-term solution in an election year regrettably is accurate, making it likely that the students and faculty in Stolac will have to find a work-around for the coming months to make do until a formal resolution is reached. ENGLISH