Divided Bosnians go to the polls
Bosnians were heading to the polls today for a general election likely to further entrench the country’s ethnic divisions, threatening closer ties to the West and possible EU entry.
Three million voters in a country split uneasily between Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats are choosing from a total field of 8,000 candidates for the central and several regional parliaments and the presidency, which is shared by the three ethnic groups.
Fifteen years after the devastating ethnic war sparked by the post-Soviet break-up of Yugoslavia and five post-war elections, the vote is still expected to fall along ethnic lines.
The campaign has been characterised by harsh rhetoric, with Serbs demanding secession, Croats calling for the possibility of their own autonomous region and the majority Bosniaks seeking a stronger central government.
The ethnic rivalries have kept Bosnia’s government largely in stalemate. Long and frustrating EU and US-led negotiations over constitutional changes that would simplify the complex political set-up of the country and strengthen the central government were put on ice earlier this year in the hope that it would be easier to find a compromise after today’s election.
But voters appear likely to re-elect the same leaders now in power, setting the stage for another four years of drift and diminishing the possibility of a path to the EU.
Political analyst Tanja Topic compared the pre-election campaign to one in 1990, when communist Yugoslavia had just collapsed and Bosnia split over whether it should become part of greater Serbia or be an independent multi-ethnic country.
After the bloody war that ended in 1995, the country became neither of those two: an independent country so ethnically divided that it could not function properly.
“So for exactly 20 years we have been spinning around in the same political pattern,” Ms Topic said.
The deal split the country into two highly autonomous regions – one for the Serbs and the other shared by the Bosniaks and Croats. The two regions are loosely linked by a central government, parliament and a three-member presidency.
In addition to parliamentary elections, Bosniaks and Croats will also vote today for the parliaments of the 10 territories in their mini-state, while Serbs will elect the president of their mini-state.
The EU has told Bosnia that if it wishes to join it must create a stronger central government, which the country’s Serb’s vehemently oppose. Serb leader Milorad Dodik has consistently argued against the union.
“Only the Serb Republic is self-sustaining, Bosnia-Herzegovina is not,” he told a pre-election rally.
But Bosniak candidate Haris Silajdzic struck a more co-operative note.
“We are trying to amend our constitution in such a way that Bosnia-Herzegovina becomes more democratic and more in line with its own past – a unique multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society,” he said on a recent campaign stop.
