Zlatko Lagumdzija

My dear friends, colleagues, people of China, and the people who are suffering and struggling with coronavirus that is deadly menacing while lurking in the darkness.

First, as a friend of China and Chinese people, I am paying my deepest condolences for the lives lost under this epidemic. I want to share with you the most profound respect for all you do under such a terrible and almost impossible circumstances.

Your courage and patience, hard work and empathy, knowledge and wisdom is not only hope for saving your great nation but for the rest of the world as well. Today you are the first line of global defense of humanity under the grim shadow of the novel pandemic. This is not a fight for your future. We are not in battle for our individual or our nation’s future. Coronavirus is tempting all of us today. Are we ready, willing and capable for having a shared future or not having future at all?

The coronavirus does not care about our borders, our norms and rules, our economic or political disputes. We are all confronted with a deadly threat. This is not the first but it can be one of the last viruses threatening us if we do not act together. A fight against viruses like this is our common threat but it is also an opportunity to collectively come together.

Even when the world is wide awake and aware, I see hope in this serious situation. The unity of China and willingness to tackle this horrible virus, its huge desire to find a solution or the cure to save lives, give me a hope and also a great respect for the people of China.

You are fighting not only against a deadly unknown virus but against ignorance, selfishness, prejudices and even fake news that are sometimes spreading faster than a pandemic.

In this battle you have set, once again, an example to the world with your excellent organizational and emergency response capabilities, and even in situations when it looks like all hopes are gone.

China is showing by example again that it is not only about growth, but never standing still, in good times or bad.

Your 5,000 years of accumulated culture, selfless dedication and unity based on accumulated wisdom, and the last four decades of historically unrecorded enormous growth directed in eradicating poverty while building the knowledge centers of global excellency, are giving me full confidence in your capacity to win this battle.

I believe that one day, soon, your struggle with the epidemic will be another building block of a shared future for mankind. It will be a logical consequence of China’s accumulation of thousands of years of culture and recent achievements in global poverty eradication, economic and technological heights.

I’m sure that China has a strength under the leadership of President Xi Jinping to prevail over this epidemic and overcome the challenges confronting all of us. Determination driven by force of shared future in dignity and prosperity for all, is the reason why I believe that better days are ahead.

I believe that you and we can make right choices for our shared future by getting out of selfishness and short term darkness to the brighter days to come together.

For closing, I will salute you with another great poet’s wise words. “There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures,” quoted from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar . kaJtk5ywWQeO5s+WhswVr0Wfz0KXf6qVm3GGYlct33iXzEwtI3tJPrLzUDf4bl5B