Glimmer of Hope for Bosnia?
Glimmer of Hope for Bosnia?
Following Bosnia’s parliamentary elections, United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton visited the region this week to push for more unity in a country still riven by ethnic hostility.
IWPR’s ICTY programme manager Merdijana Sadović looks at the elections’ implications for Bosnia’s future and European integration.
What do the results of the recent elections say about Bosnia’s progress since the war – is it still locked in the old hostilities or are there signs that a new approach is emerging?
The results of the general elections held in Bosnia on October 3 show that this country remains largely divided along ethnic lines, but there are some encouraging signs that there might be changes in the next parliamentary term.
As part of the complex election system, voters chose Serb, Croat and Bosniak members of the tri-partite presidency, along with representatives for the central, regional and cantonal parliaments. They also voted for a new president and vice-president of the Bosnian Serb entity Republika Srpska, RS.
The new Bosniak member of the tripartite presidency is Bakir Izetbegovic, the son of Bosnia’s wartime president Alija.
Izetbegovic replaced Haris Silajdzic and, unlike his predecessor, made it clear during his pre-election campaign that he would try to improve relations between Bosniaks and Serbs and restore a dialogue between Sarajevo and Banja Luka – the capital of RS – one which ceased to exist during Silajdzic’s mandate.
Silajdzic favoured a centralised state and kept challenging the existence of the RS, which heightened Bosnian Serbs animosity towards Bosniaks and exacerbated the political deadlock.
The moderate politician Zeljko Komsic was re-elected Croat member of the presidency. His multi-ethnic Social Democratic Party, SDP, won the overall majority of votes in the Bosniak-Croat Federation. This indicates that a significant number of citizens in this entity favour progressive politicians over nationalists.
In RS, the leader of the Union of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, the Bosnian Serb nationalist Milorad Dodik, was elected president of the entity. During his election campaign, Dodik, who held the post of RS premier, faced much more vigorous opposition than was expected. This opposition may eventually be able to challenge Dodik’s autocratic rule and separatist tendencies.
Dodik, who started his political career as a moderate pro-western politician, has over the last four years promoted RS secession and opposed all changes to the constitution that would strengthen Bosnia as a unified state.
What can US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hope to achieve during her visit to the region this week?
Bosniak politicians, who see the US as their friend, hope that Clinton will tell Bosnian Serb politicians they need to recognise that separatist ideas will lead RS towards isolation, while cooperation with their Bosniak and Croat counterparts will result in faster accession to the European Union. Clinton is also expected to encourage changes to Bosnia’s highly inefficient constitution, the result of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement which ended the 1992-95 war. Serbs have been the main opponent of these changes, fearing that they would weaken RS and strengthen the state government.
Where is Bosnia on the road to European integration? What has been achieved and what major obstacles remain?
According to the international community's high representative to Bosnia, Valentin Inzko, in the last four years hardly any of Bosnia’s required reforms for European integration have been implemented because the country’s leaders “have – by accident or by design – marched down a blind alley”.
However, there was one positive development last week when members of the European parliament voted for the liberalisation of the visa regime for Bosnian citizens. In this case at, least, the Bosnian government managed to work together to meet all the EU criteria.
However, Bosnia still has a long way to go to meet the demands for EU membership, primarily when it comes to constitutional changes. They also need to prove that Bosnia can survive on its own, without constant supervision by the international community, whose representative in Sarajevo still has powers – vested upon him by the Dayton agreement – to impose laws and sack politicians who threaten the country’s stability.
What reforms need to be implemented and do ethnic hostilities still prevent legislators from instituting them?
One of the priorities of the new authorities in Bosnia should be the reform of the constitution in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights. For instance, Bosnian voters can elect only Serb, Croat and Bosniak representatives to the state presidency but not representatives of any other minority groups. The director of the European Commission for Enlargement, Pierre Mirel, recently cast doubt on whether a country where not all citizens were eligible to be elected to the presidency could ever join the EU.
Ideally, citizens of the whole country should be able to vote for any representative they chose, regardless of their ethnicity and the entity they live in. However, Serbs and Croats have so far opposed these changes, fearing that Bosniaks – who are a majority in this country – would overpower them.
Is there a risk of partition if the situation is not resolved?
Bosnia, once a multi-ethnic state, became an artificial country when the Dayton Peace Agreement was signed and the country was split into two entities divided along ethnic lines, with a high degree of independence and very few common interests. The agreement was intended to be a temporary solution aimed at putting an end to the war.
Many Serbs have not given up their dream of independence, and observers believe that the only hope for Bosnia to remain a unified state is to join the EU. With economic prosperity, separatist ambitions may decrease and a prosperous economy will succeed in doing what Bosnian politicians have failed to achieve – creating a strong country in which economic interests will trump nationalistic ideas and aspirations.
