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Bosnia’s Elections Looking Like Mission Impossible
‘We're not talking "free and fair' elections.
By Mark Heinrich
This is a Balkan country torn by war into three ethnic nationalist camps, although two are nominally united by Dayton. There is no free movement between Muslim-Croat and Serb territories and it is only limited in the Muslim-Croat federation area. Freedom of assembly is tenuous and the main media are dominated by nationalist parties who want the election to seal Bosnia's division, not encourage reunification as intended.
"I think today we will be in a position to indicate that all parties (including SDS) can go forward in the election process," Frowick told a news conference in Sarajevo. "Today the peace process in Bosnia has taken a potentially major step forward.
Dr Karadzic (needed to) resign for the sake of his own people...I think the situation has been clarified but we must await events (to be sure) since there have been so many agreements not properly implemented in this country. "Eligible voters are spread through 35 countries and often unversed in democratic choice. There are some 900,000 refugees abroad and up to 1.5 million displaced persons -- no one has a precise count -- within Bosnia.
Indicted by the U.N. criminal tribunal on former Yugoslavia, Radovan Karadzic was banned by Dayton from political activity, but he bobbed and weaved for months to hang on as president of the Serb Republic and its ruling SDS party. He finally quit on Friday after an 11th-hour threat by Dayton's U.S. architect, Richard Holbrooke, to disbar the SDS and reimpose U.N. sanctions on the Serbs. Now energies will be poured initially into getting as many people as possible registered by the July 31 deadline.
Anxious to reach far-flung war refugees, the OSCE has announced they can register via the Internet. "Many parties have been established since the refugees left so they have never heard of them. We'll have to provide information about them, a huge undertaking," van Vliet said. In August, she said, OSCE would focus on arranging security measures and safe passage across ethnic boundaries to ballot stations for refugees seeking to vote in their original towns.
She said OSCE was already talking with the NATO peace force in Bosnia about laying down a broad security blanket. A plethora of international civilian agencies, including U.N. and European Union police monitors and the U.N. refugee agency, would probably help escort displaced voters "We're working on identifying locales where we'll have to pay more attention to security problems," van Vliet said. She would not identify problem areas. But arranging for Muslims to vote in the virulently nationalist Serb entity would probably be the OSCE's trickiest challenge.
Disturbing reports of electoral manipulation are already emerging. Separatist authorities on Serb territory are refusing relief aid to Serb refugees who may want to vote on Muslim or Croat-controlled terrain where they once lived, the U.N. says. Some 3.5 million people will be eligible to vote for 25,000 candidates at countrywide, entity and communal levels to establish a loosely federal Bosnia.
There is to be a Bosnia-wide presidency -- composed of one Muslim, one Serb and one Croat -- and parliament as well as separate assemblies in Muslim-Croat and Serb territory.
The OSCE is funding projects to foster independent regional media, especially television. This, in theory, would give a voice to a handful of moderate, non-ethnic opposition parties who support post-war reconciliation in Bosnia. But Western observers are bracing for electoral triumphs by the main Serb, Croat and Muslim nationalist parties, stirring and feeding off broad segregationist sentiment left by the war. |
SARAJEVO, July 21 (Reuters) - After working overtime to remove indicted Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic, Bosnia's election organisers now get down to real business -- fighting through a labyrinth of logistics to produce a legitimate vote. Prescribed by the 1995 Dayton peace treaty, the September 14 ballot may be among the most complex and fraught in history.
Many may register to vote in person or as absentees in their pre-war towns but face obstacles from post-war power brokers there bent on preserving the results of "ethnic cleansing." "We're not talking "free and fair' elections. We're talking "reasonably democratic' elections. They won't be perfect," said Johanna van Vliet of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is organising the vote.
Berserkistan, July 19 · Bosnian Refugees Can Register to Vote via Internet
Berserkistan, July 19 · SDS Party Will be Certified for Bosnian Election
Berserkistan, July 18 · Karadzic or Not, Election Boycott Feared
OSCE The Swiss OSCE Presidency Home Page
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