The citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, gathered at the Founding Assembly OF THE CITIZENS ALTERNATIVE PARLIAMENT OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA (CAP BiH), deliberately express their political will to participate actively in the constitution of the parliamentary democracy in the State of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Politics, as a space of public liberty, requires autonomous, free and independent citizen, without which even the best democratic institutions are meaningless.
Today the majority of individuals are hostages of nationalistic elite. Today we have still not had Bosnia and Herzegovina as a normal and democratic Republic. Nobody from outside can create it. Our objective is the State-Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the equal-rights-citizens, as their own and original deed in which the differences among people resulting from various national, social, political, religious, cultural and sexual identities will be human dignity.
The vision of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a free, democratic and State with the rule of law, only opens normal, democratic and civilised space for human respect of all differences and civilised solving of the disputes. Only a free, independent and autonomous individual as an equal-rights-citizen, can be a subject of his own release of the ghosts of
national and chauvinistic fury,
social egoism and prosperity chauvinism,
political fanaticism,
religious autism,
cultural isolation and
male chauvinism.

There is no such a Bosnia and Herzegovina so far. There is no such a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, such a Bosnia and Herzegovina could be if we would begin to work on it even today, starting from the best sides of our own historical experience and from the democratic project.

THE CITIZENS ALTERNATIVE PARLIAMENT OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA can be a political path towards such a Bosnia and Herzegovina and such free citizens. In such a Bosnia and Herzegovina sexual differences would not disappear, but the accumulated forms of sexual discrimination would. Also social differences and injustice in it would not disappear immediately, but the principle of social justice would be seriously taken in to account. Political differences in it would be solved by consensus and without power. In such a Republic God would be worshipped in a number of ways, without fanaticism that divides; in such a State cultural differences would autonomously meet each other. And finally, for the first time in its history, in a Bosnia that still does not, but could exist, the democratic institutions and democratic and politically ripe culture would create the conditions for true expression of the national identity of Bosniaks, Serbs, Croats and around thirty other minorities that have lived in it.

Contrary to Europe and the world and contrary to the own national elite that do not believe in the possibility for the democratic multi-national states to exist, we believe and prove with rational arguments that such a Bosnia and Herzegovina is possible, but only in the case that hypocritical and tragic differences between democratic and national principles are overcome whenever a "happy" overlapping between a nation and a state is not possible.
Both from outside and from inside we have being taught that several nations can not exist in one country and that it is better to have - at any price - the own state. Anyway, the richer part of Europe knows only what "clean" one-nation democratic state is. That is why it is not surprising that from Lisbon to Dayton it has tried to impose us such an ethnically clean state, with a strong argument that all multi-national non-democratic states collapsed at last (USSR, Czechoslovakia, SFRY) right upon their first meeting with democracy. The fact that Europe and the world have still been trying to help survival of Bosnia and Herzegovina can not be explained with humanitarian and ethic problems with the world politics any more, and even less so with the principal reasons.

Opposite to general scepticism about the possibility of existing of democratic multi-national communities, we would like to emphasise that it is our only human chance. We are also conscious of the unique historic situation after the indescribable suffering, first of all of the children and the women during the totalitarian war on our territory, that our political objective is completely new in Europe: to create Bosnia and Herzegovina as a democratic multi-national state with the rule of law in which nations will not disappear as in American history, or by fire and sward imitate the European provilege and the exception of several rich nations-states which as a universal rule represent the situation of congruence of civic (= state) and national principle. We cannot learn anything important either from Europe or from America regarding this, but in many other aspects of democracy and civilisation we must not avoid them. When we emphasise the advantage of civic principle over national, we are trying to show that the bare - although not developed enough - project of "multi-ethnic" Bosnia and Herzegovina is also a pure ethnic project, and that the absolute rule of ethnic principle is peril for Bosnia and Herzegovina; that a great number of fanatic friends of the "own" nation have destroyed right the own nations undermining the power of democracy. Democracy is the only space in which man and citizen can realise, beside the other things, also their national identity in the best way.

C H A R T E R

OF THE CITIZENS’ ALTERNATIVE PARLIAMENT
OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

THE CITIZENS’ ALTERNATIVE PARLIAMENT OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA (CAP BiH) has been made as the Association of non-governmental civil actors in Bosnia and Herzegovina and outside, it is not a party and the necessity for its creation arose first because of the need of co-ordination and reconciliation of the activities and initiatives that lead towards the establishment of the institutions of the parliamentary democracy and civic society. The new beginning of history takes place only after great war disasters and revolutions. The citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina have an incredibly responsible task today - to create both the state and the civic society. The total and exterminating nature of the war on our territory completely destroyed both of them, but, somehow, the actors from both spheres have managed to survive.

Today we are facing the reality of militarily, territorially and politically divided Bosnia and Herzegovina - divided into two or three parts that after the implementation of the Peace Treaty from Dayton and Paris will be symbolically brought together in the empty name “Bosnia and Herzegovina” without any qualitative marks of the state’s identity. It did not happen by chance. There was no mistake there. If it happened that symbolic institutions representing the statehood would be blocked by the will of newly elected and legitimate representatives of the three major nations after the elections in September 1996, the main political actors in the country and the international community would seriously count on the definite ethnical division of Bosnia and Herzegovina into two or three sovereign countries - what they have already done both today and yesterday.

We are deeply against such a disastrous end of the war and peace on our territory. We are deeply against new war games, considering the fact that the extermination of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a State within its former borders could not be obtained in a peaceful way.