Source : Perth Now news
Polls have opened in Bosnia for a general election in which most citizens of the multi-ethnic Balkan nation are focused on everyday problems.
Around 3.4 million voters in Bosnia are choosing the three members of the country’s multi-ethnic presidency, lawmakers for the national parliament, and heads of institutions for the country’s two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska.
The complex network of institutions was created in a US-brokered peace agreement that ended the 1992-95 war.
Taking centre stage in the contest is a staunchly pro-Russian politician who, despite not appearing on the ballot, has dominated the campaign and inflamed divisions that have sparked fears of renewed instability.
Milorad Dodik, the separatist and nationalist former president of the Serb-majority Republika Srpska, has been banned from holding public office after being convicted of defying decisions by the international envoy overseeing the 1995 peace agreement.
Just back from a trip to Moscow where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Dodik’s party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, is likely to win the election in Republika Srpska.
At his party’s final election rally Friday night in Banja Luka, Republika Srpska’s administrative capital, Dodik told supporters that Bosnia “is dead.”
“It is an impossible country. It doesn’t make any sense,” Dodik said at the rally, which was also attended by the Russian ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Igor Khalabukov.
While Bosnia has been peaceful in recent years, its politicians have kept alive the divisions between the country’s Bosniaks, who are mainly Muslim, and its Serbs and Croats.
Bosnian Serb leaders like Dodik have pushed for their separation from the rest of Bosnia, which has led to concerns among western countries that tensions could once again spill over.
One of the poorest countries in Europe, Bosnia is still struggling to recover decades after the war that started after Bosnia declared independence from the Serb-led former Yugoslavia and ethnic Serbs took up arms to carve out their own state and join Serbia.
The conflict killed more than 100,000 people and displaced millions.
Ahead of Election Day, Durak Miler, a resident of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, said governing politicians “just poison people when they talk.”
“We should change the old faces,” he said. “They have been governing for 35 years … I think whoever comes next will work better for retired people and the poor.”
Authorities are for the first time using electronic identification of voters and scanning of ballots to prevent irregularities or organised voter manipulation, which have cast doubt on the fairness of previous elections.
Many disillusioned citizens say politicians are using nationalism to avoid solving important problems such as poor living standards and an exodus of youth from the country.
Ivan Silic, from the southern town of Mostar, said: “I don’t see that anything is getting better, from the moment I started to vote.”
“We all know who lives well,” he said. “It is better for (politicians), and for the rest of us everything is the same.”
