Voting started in Bosnia yesterday in elections it is hoped will unblock reforms and give a fresh impetus to the ethnically divided country to join the EU.
The election follows a campaign in which the main parties pushed for voters to again choose along ethnic lines for the leadership of the central authority and two semi-independent entities: Bosnian Serb-dominated Republika Srpska (RS) and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, inhabited mainly by Bosniaks and Croats.
However, in a Sarajevo polling station, voters tired of years of inter-ethnic strife wanted the election to bring change.
PHOTO: AFP
“I am voting in the hope that I will see big changes because the government is really bad,” political scientist Emina Abrahamsdotter told reporters.
“I expect the new government to tackle the economic and social crisis, to combat unemployment,” she said, as she cast her vote for the multi-ethnic Social Democratic Party.
Almost 15 years after the end of the 1992-1995 war, Bosnia’s Muslims (Bosniaks), Croats and Serbs remain strictly entrenched in their own communities. The international community that monitors the war-torn country hopes that the vote will bring a new leadership that will work to overcome ethnic divisions and push for the strengthening of the weak central institutions, a key condition for Bosnia to enter the EU.
The internationally brokered Dayton Agreement that ended the war divided the country into the semi-independent Bosnian Serb and Bosniak-Croat entities.
Each has its own government and they are linked by weak central institutions based in Sarajevo.
In the RS, voters were less keen on a change and dismissed any suggestion that Bosnian Serbs should give up some of their autonomy to the central institutions.
“I voted for [the hardline nationalist Alliance of Independent Social Democrats] SNSD because I don’t want to live in centralized Bosnia and SNSD is the biggest fighter for the RS,” 52-year-old salesman Miro Lac said. “I want them to win because then we are safe.”
Voters were to elect the tripartite presidency, the central parliament and assemblies for the two entities. In the RS, they were also to vote for a president, while in the Bosniak-Croat Federation voters were to choose districts parliaments.
Bosnia has been politically deadlocked since the 2006 polls as Bosnian Serbs oppose any strengthening of the central institutions at the expense of RS autonomy.
Political reforms, in particular a centralization of government, are required by the international community and are a key condition for the country’s further EU rapprochement.
A recent survey showed that 90 percent of all Bosnia’s citizens support the country’s integration into the EU.
Analysts warn that further stagnation in the reform process could be devastating for one of Europe’s least developed countries.
“Some sort of political change is absolutely necessary unless we want to end up living in a social and economic catastrophe,” analyst Haris Abaspahic told reporters ahead of the vote.
Bosnia’s already fragile economy was hard hit by the global financial crisis. The GDP shrank by 3.2 percent last year, while the unemployment rate in July reached 43 percent, according to the Bosnian Federal Office of Statistics.
About 1,100 observers, including 485 international ones, were monitoring the vote.
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