By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Oct 2 2006 (IPS)

The results emerging from the crucial general elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina Sunday confirm the deep ethnic divisions between its Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs.

The first results from the complicated voting in this ex-Yugoslav nation of four million show that outspoken candidates entrenched in their nationalist views are winning the race.

Wartime prime minister Haris Silajdzic is “poised to win the post of Bosniak (Muslim) representative in the three-member presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” head of the Central Electoral Commission Branko Petric said Monday morning in Sarajevo.

The presidency includes a Croat and a Serb representative under the administrative structure created within the Dayton Peace Accords that ended the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The peace deal aimed to impose ethnic balance and set up a multi-ethnic nation of Muslim Bosniaks, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs. But the scars of the war that left more than 100,000 dead remain deep..

The race for the Croat candidate for presidency is likely to be won by Ivo Miro Jovic from the nationalist Croat Democratic Union. Among Bosnian Serbs the most likely winner is Nebojsa Radmanovic.

The three reflect separate views on the future of Bosnia-Herzegovina that have changed little since the war.

Silajdzic wants stronger powers for a central Sarajevo government and abolishment of entities created by the peace treaty. Jovic claims that Croats are endangered among Bosniaks and Serbs, while Radmanovic takes the line that a strong influence of Sarajevo authorities is unnecessary.

Like other Bosnian Serb leaders, Radmanovic wants a referendum on separation of a Bosnian Serb republic, though such a possibility is not provisioned by the law.

Under the Dayton Peace Accords, the nation was divided into a Bosnian Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat Federation, with a central government in capital Sarajevo. But only Bosniaks appear willing to keep a united Bosnia-Herzegovina, while Croats and Serbs are looking towards their next of kin in Croatia and Serbia proper.

“The newly elected leaders will have to come to some serious work,” Christian Shwartz Schilling, head of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) that oversees the peace process and democratisation since 1995 said Sunday.

The office is to close next year because the country is expected to start running its own affairs without international supervision. But no promise of that appeared in these elections.

“Little or nothing was done in these elections to explain the European future of the nation as a whole,” Zlatko Lagumdzija from the multi-ethnic Social Democrat Party told IPS on phone from Sarajevo. Bosnia-Herzegovina is to sign an association agreement with the European Union (EU) by the end of the year.

“We are as far from the EU as can be, the campaign of the parties remained at the level of highlighting the ethnic divisions and who did what to whom (in the war),” Lagumzija added.

According to results arriving at the Central Electoral Commission in Sarajevo, voting at all levels resembles the trends in the presidency elections. This means that the nationalist parties will dominate the central parliament and the parliaments of both entities – the Bosnian Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat Federation.

The complicated procedures mean that the final results will be announced over the next 30 days.

Central Electoral Commission head Petric said the turnout was 52.7 percent of 2.7 million voters. He declined to comment whether this was the consequence of apathy among people who do not see a better future.

In his address to jubilant voters, Haris Silajdzic admitted Monday morning that Bosnia still has “ethnic representation, not citizens’ representation.” He added: “There are obviously parties that have a different concept…so we’ll have to talk.”

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