prijava
SARAJEVO, November 8 (FENA) - I got out of Potočari on a truck with my mother and grandmother in 1995. I was four years old. My father managed to get out on foot through the forest. We waited for him in Tuzla, and later we lived in Banovići as refugees, remembers Elvir Klempić today, a Vlasenica born young man, his plight during the war in BiH, as he was among the fifty most important people of the campaign staff of the newly elected US President Joe Biden, in an exclusive interview for the Istraga.ba web portal.
In the moments when he was talking for the said portal, he was on the street, celebrating Biden's victory.
"From the time I was a refugee to this moment. I helped, as much as I could, for someone to become an American president. It is an incredible feeling," says Klempić.
From July 1995 to 2001, Elvir lived in Banovići. Then, as a nine-year-old, he moved with his family to United States, to the state of Iowa.
It was in Iowa almost two decades later, in the Democratic Party election, that Joe Biden began his journey toward the White House.
Elivir Klempić was part of Biden's campaign staff, in charge of advocacy among ethnic groups.
"I think I was the first Bosnian to participate in the campaign for the American president at this level. I was in charge of relations with ethnic groups in all 50 American states. Some 17-18 ethnic groups, from the Balkans, the Middle East, Africa, the whole of Europe. I was in charge of that. My job was to gather all those ethnic groups," Klempić explains.
When asked who brought the decisive difference, Klempić states that Poles and Bosnians did it, in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan...
"First of all, Bosnians went to the polls en masse for the first time in these elections. So, something that hadn’t been seen before and that was especially visible in Pennsylvania and Georgia. And there are 11 and a half million Poles in the United States. A very strong ethnic community that, in 2016, surprisingly, voted for Donald Trump.
We have now changed that, as we have stepped up our commitment to shift bring them to the side of the Democrats. They were crucial in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. We gave them some hope to understand that they are part of this society," says Klempić.
Eventually, it all paid back. Joe Biden won the race for US president.
"It is an incredible victory. We worked on it for a year and a half. We came back from the dead two or three times. Nobody believed that we could do this, that we would finish victorious. This is a campaign that has made people across America of different nations and different backgrounds a part of this. This also applies to our BiH diaspora," Klempić states euphorically.
Asked by Istraga.ba web portal whether the administration of newly elected President Biden would step up engagement in the Balkans, and especially in BiH, Klempić said this would change the US policy in the Balkans, "because now we have a person who understands the Balkans".
"Secondly, President Biden has a lot of experience. Thirdly, the people who are now connected to our team, and who will be connected to the administration in the future, know the Balkans very well. They worked on US relations with the Balkans. And it is not only BiH, but also Serbia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. These are people who understand the region very well and have a deep understanding of what had happened in the 1990s and want BiH to become part of NATO and the EU. The engagement of the USA will be much greater," Klempić concludes in an interview for Istraga.ba. .
Asked if he would perhaps be appointed to some high-ranking position in future Biden administration, Klempić answered with a smile: "I remain behind President Biden."
(FENA) S. R.
