Fourth Annual Conference in Neum

Page 16

Good morning everyone,

I did not want to let this opportunity pass when there are so many of you here in one place and where I can say this to as many members as possible in person. Many of you already know that I am planning to leave Bosnia and Herzegovina this coming February, and I just wanted to share a thought with you. Some of the members approached me this morning before this plenary session and were saying, “what shall we do without you” and “you can’t leave,” which is of course nice to hear. But, I want to give you all a message from my perspective where the Association is today having been with you from beginning.

How will this Association continue into the future? I can say that you have extremely strong leadership in both your Steering Board and in your Executive Director and of course all of the honorary members who were inducted this weekend, as well as past honorary members including myself, you should not forget. Although those faces are not around you every day, they are here supporting you whenever you need it.

The difference that I have seen between the first elections when I was working with OSCE in 1997 and the elections held this year gives me all the confidence in the world that you will go forward as a very strong electoral administration body of professionals. Also the difference between the First Congress of Local Election Officials that we held in December of 1998 in Teslić, I know that some of you here in the room were there as well, and the conference that was held this weekend with the participation of so many active association members—everyone from the Secretariat staff through the Steering Board and members of working bodies. Workshop leaders did a fantastic job throughout this weekend. The entertainment committee, fundraising committee, and so many of you have become so active, not only for this conference but also throughout the year. This gives me great confidence in your future and should also give you the same confidence. My greatest reward will be to come back to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the future to see that this Association is a relevant civil society actor and that it is even more active than it is today.

On a personal note, I can say that it is a difficult decision to leave Bosnia and Herzegovina and one that I do not take lightly. I am tempted to stay here to continue working on whatever I can to make a small contribution toward improving this complex and challenging situation that you live in every day. But after nearly six years, it is time for me to begin a new phase in my life. I do not know what that will be yet as I have no plans. But together with my husband, whom many of you know I met here in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I hope that the next six years will be as rewarding as the last six have been working with you.

I do know that I am leaving this country more optimistic than when I came here knowing that it is in the hands of people like you—those of you who are sitting in the room today and the members throughout the country who are not with us here this weekend. You are people who love Bosnia and Herzegovina and are willing to work hard to ensure a bright future for this beautiful country. So to all AEOBiH members, whether you are here or somewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I wish you the courage and the strength to continue fighting to make things better to improve not only the election process but also the overall quality of life of your fellow citizens. As Scott Lansell said earlier today, it is a quality of life that citizens take for granted because they do not see the work that you doing behind the scenes, especially when things are going well. You are truly the unspoken heroes of Bosnia and Herzegovina and your efforts in the outcome of the last elections show that. I think that the more people who recognize this, the better things will become here in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As a final statement I would just like to thank a few people who deserve recognition on this occasion. I would begin chronologically with OSCE for making my work here in Bosnia and Herzegovina possible by bringing me here in the first place. I would like to thank USAID for their unprecedented support at this conference, and I made the comment to Mike Henning earlier that we have never had a conference where we’ve had the USAID mission director spend two full days with us and the democracy officer spend the entire conference with us, going to workshops and listening to what you have to say. So I would like to say personally that I appreciate that and I know that I am speaking on behalf of everyone in this room that everyone very much appreciates your presence, even last night when you stayed through the final round of the “tombola” (raffle).

I would also like to thank IFES as an organization and all the individuals with whom I have worked. It has been wonderful to be out here in Bosnia and Herzegovina to work with you on a personal level when I have had so many people back in Washington supporting everything that we are trying to do here together. Specifically today I would like to thank Lionel, Dana and Scott for taking the time to travel out here just for a few days to be with us and to make sure that you feel that support will continue.

I would like to thank again all of the members of the association, all of you who had perhaps started out at the beginning not quite sure where this was going to take us and having the faith and the belief to keep working and believing in yourselves, in your skills and in your talents—and look at where you are today. Let’s take a moment to pause and feel some accomplishment in that.

I would also like to say thank you to the entire Secretariat staff who have basically been my second family away from home, because I spend so much time in the office and they are the only faces that I see week in and week out unless I come to the field and see all of you. It will be a big transition for them as well, but I know they have the leadership and the heart to continue offering the support services to you as an association that you need in order to be successful in the future.

And although they are not here with me today, I would like to say thank you to my husband and to my family for the support that they have shown in me being away from home so long; six years away from my family in the United States and the last two years away from my husband who left the OSCE a couple years ago to go back to law school. He has been of great support, and he knows as much about the association as anyone else does because usually our dinner conversation, unfortunately for him, cycles around our latest efforts in whatever project that we are working on together. If he were here today I would apologize for that, but he has been wonderfully supportive and is also following your efforts very closely and with great interest and sees that this project and this effort is one that has been very worthwhile and worth supporting.

I think that I have exhausted the list of all the people that I would like to thank here today and would just like to again offer you words of encouragement to just continue what you are you doing because you are doing everything right. I will be in e–mail contact I am sure on a regular basis with Irena and hopefully there will be some plans to come back and see all of you in the not too distant future.

Thank you once again for your work and more importantly for your friendship!