Konjic Pictures

I keep reading on the news how New Jersey and Philadelphia keep getting hit with snow yet here it has been in the 50's for the last two weeks and really all winter has been pretty mild.  Today I was asked if I wanted to go for a walk and I thought they said they were going to Old Town which is about 5 minutes by car.  Instead we drove about an hour or so and went to the town of Konjic.  Here are just a few of the pictures I took while I was there.

Anti-Government Unrest in Bosnia

Going back to November I would see small protest outside of the one Government building that I would walk past on my way to work.  The first day I saw it I asked a cop what was going on.  He told me it was a protest.  Since then I have learned that there are a lot of people who are unhappy with the government.  Then yesterday, while I was at school, I was told that there had been larger anti-government protest in the northern part of Bosnia and that now there was a big protest down town (which is technically down the street) as kind of a sign of solidarity with the protesters in the north.  They showed me the story on the internet and people were pushing dumpsters into the streets and lighting them on fire.  I commented that it is getting like Los Angeles after the Lakers win a championship.    

Here is a link to some articles along with the comment that I posted:

http://news.yahoo.com/protesters-set-fire-government-building-bosnian-town-125408004--finance.html

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/anti-government-unrest-in-bosnia-slideshow/


I am currently working in Sarajevo. while there is high unemployment the bigger problem is gov't corruption. One example is the politicians keep getting paid but public workers aren't. I teach at a private school but some of the teachers in the public schools haven't been paid since October. The gov't just borrowed (or is in the process of borrowing) money from the international monetary fund to pay some of their bills. What adds fuel to the fire is the average teacher gets paid 1200Km a month (equal to $800 US) Here in Sarajevo the one politician said there is no money to pay the teachers and yet his salary is 40,000Km per month. 

Taxes is also a problem. Really the only tax that is paid is a 17% sales tax on everything. There is only property tax if you own more than one property and I have been told no such thing as income tax, state or local tax or payroll tax exist. So the gov't gets the sales tax, pays themselves and then pays whatever bills they can with what is left over. A friend of mine who is from here said the problem is the country is still in transition from a communist country to a capitalist country. The joke being communism fell over 20 years ago.