Nationalists Maintain Majority in Bosnian Elections
By Lauren Crook
October 8, 2008 | Printer Friendly

AFP reports that in elections in Bosnia over the October 4th weekend, over 55 percent of eligible citizens voted for 140 mayors and members of 149 local councils. The ethnic lines which have divided the country since the end of Bosnia’s war in 1995 appeared to be the main driving force in the voting, with the Bosnian Serbs supporting the Party of Independent Social Democrats and the Muslim Bosniaks and Roman Catholic Croats behind the Party for Democratic Action. As anticipated by analysts, each ethnic group voted for its own party to control its main geographic area, leaving the nation even more separated than before.

In general, Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats desire a united country that could eventually become a part of the European Union while the Serbs want to maintain their autonomy and perhaps even one day secede. The Prime Minister of the Bosnian Serb republic, Milorad Dodik, has been called “the true defender of Serb national interests and the preservation of Republika Srpska” because of his dedication to Serbian sovereignty. It appears that the Bosnian Serbs are showing more strength than ever in this election, doubling the number of elected mayors from 15 (in the 2004 elections) to 32 positions, with Dodik claiming that the party “totally defeated [their] political opponents.”

The International Herald Tribune reports that many analysts suspect that the domination of the nationalist party once again in the political arena can be mainly attributed to the low turnout by urban voters. In the capital city of Sarajevo, for example, only 40 percent of those eligible voted. This is a fairly accurate expression of the overall feeling of voters in cities who analysts claim are “apathetic, some even disgusted with politics in general; they do not see a new political force on the stage that could offer some quality solutions.”

The fact that Bosnians voted along the ethnic divide was not a surprise to most analysts, with one political scientist even anticipating that “if this trend continues, the parliamentary election in 2010 will amount to an ethnic census," keeping the country “in the grip of the divisive political parties that emerged from the 1992-95 Bosnia war.” The Financial Times claims that although the two halves have been at peace for almost 13 years now, Bosnia as a whole “barely qualifies as a functioning state” due to a lack of domestic cohesiveness. The Serbian desire for independence on the one is seen to conflict with the Croatian plea to strengthen weak national ties leaves a great amount of doubt as to whether these two mini-states will ever be able to find common ground.

References:

AFP: Nationalists cement hold in Bosnia local elections

International Herald Tribune: Bosnians vote on ethnic lines in local elections

Southeast European Times: Nationalist parties dominate elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Financial Times: Bosnia divides the EU – again

Javno: Bosnians Keep Ethnic Parties in Power

ADNKronos International: Bosnia: Nationalist parties score victory in municipal elections