Bosnian Election Official Claims Rules
Tend to Ratify Ethnic Cleansing
SARAJEVO, May 10 (Reuters) — Elections required under Bosnia's peace accords will help partition the country because ballot rules tend to ratify ethnic cleansing, an election official said on Friday. Kasim Begic, a Muslim representative on Bosnia's Provisional Election Commission (PEC), said: "My impression is there's a lot of pressure to hold elections even if the pre-conditions of refugee returns and freedom of movement are not met. That's the problem.""The rules allow any citizen to petition for permission to vote in a municipality other than his (pre-war) place of origin," Begic told Reuterss. "People who have been driven from their homes will be allowed to vote in the communities where they have ended up, many of them living in other people's houses. The (pre-war) multi-ethnic mix of Bosnia will be destroyed."
Begic argues that, while balloting will elect new members to parliament and to the country's collective presidency, of deeper and more lasting significance will be the government institutions created at the municipal level. "It is at the municipal level that we will answer the question of whether a multi-ethnic, democratic Bosnia is possible," Begic said.
"Once someone votes in a place he feels like he's a member of that community. Even if he's living in someone else's home he begins to feel he's the owner of that stolen property. New (government) institutions will be created around a lie." More than two million civilians became refugees or internally displaced persons as a result of the 43-month Bosnian war, fully half the country's population.
Most were uprooted on an ethnic basis as Muslim, Serb and Croat-led armies battled for territory. The Dayton peace agreement signed late last year divided Bosnia administratively into a Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat federation and envisioned contry-wide elections as a vehicle for ethnic reconciliation and reintegration.
Instead, the boundary between the Serb and Muslim-Croat halves of Bosnia is solidifying into a border and the country is separating into three ethically homgenous areas. The Serb republic, whose leaders fought the war to create ethnically-pure territory, now control 49 per cent of the country, an area virtually devoid of non-Serbs. The federation is more ethnically mixed, but Muslims and Croats are blocking Serbs and each other from returning to homes in localities where one or the other dominate.
Dayton assigned responsibility for supervising elections to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Under the terms of Dayton, OSCE created the Provisional Election Commission, with foreign experts and representatives from the republic and federation. The PEC, of which Begic is a member, promulgated the election rules.
May 8 · Campaign Rhetoric Could Further Divide Bosnia
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Apr 19 · Silajdzic Launches Attack on Croatia
Apr 17 · Bosnian Media Network Unlikely by Election Time
Apr 16 · Renegade Muslim Leader in Bosnian Elections
Apr 15 · Serbs Said Undermining Bosnian Elections
Apr 14 · Silajdzic Announces New Political Party
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