Local Elections in B&H Completed

The first half won by Social Democrats, the second will be played in October

AIM Sarajevo, 14 April, 2000

Social Democrats of B&H made fantastic progress, Izetbegovic's Party of Democratic Action (SDA) was beaten where it expected the least, Croat Democratic Community (HDZ) "retreated" into municipalities of Western Herzegovina, Serb Democratic Party (SDS) re-confirmed domination only in the eastern part of the Republika Srpska, and minor satellite parties experienced a complete fiasco.

This is what a telegraphic report could be like of the still unratified results of local elections in B&H. Almost five years after the end of the war, Bosnia & Herzegovina had the election process the results of which could not be anticipated with certainty. In other words, this was finally a declaration of the will of the electorate about the rule of municipalities, and not mere counting of members of different ethnic groups as before. That is the cause for numerous conclusions coming especially from the ranks of the considerably reinforced Social Democratic Party (SDP) of B&H that local elections marked a successfully ended first half of their decisive match with the nationalists and that the second half - general elections in October - will result in the final fall of those who are (co-)responsible for the war, genocide, misery, hopelessness.

There are three key characteristics of the just completed local elections in B&H. First, the ruling nationalistic parties have lost predominance in a large number of municipalities although ethnic membership of voters most frequently corresponded to the ethnic prefix of the party in power. For the first time threatened existence was the motive for the choice made by the voters and not the fairy-tale about the threatened ethnic group. Since the poverty of the people in Bosnia & Herzegovina is linked to financial embezzlement of the extremely rich ethnic oligarchies, it seems that revealing of financial scandals in the media last year, appropriating of donations and war profiteering of members of the authorities certainly affected the choice of new municipal leaders. An example of this in the Federation is Ustikolina near Foca in which SDP won absolute power (so far it has more than 65 per cent of the votes) and the population of which is almost majority Bosniac. Ustikolina is known to the public as a place about which the two representatives of Sarajevo in Dayton - Izetbegovic and Silajdzic - spent many hours convincing Milosevic that it should belong to them. At the time they allegedly claimed that this place was on "sacred Muslim land". Later it turned out that the sanctuary and Ustikolina do not have much in common, but that rather large castles of up to one thousand square metres were being built there, among other for Silajdzic himself and a tycoon and close friend of Izetbegovic's son Bakir - Senad Sahinpasic.

The second characteristic of this election process in B&H is crystallisation of political options the voters chose. Generally speaking, local elections have passed as a struggle of parties of social democratic orientation on the one and rightist SDA, SDS and HDZ assisted by the sophisticated ethnic concept of Silajdzic's Party for B&H, Ivanic's party of Democratic Process or Radisic's Socialist Party of RS (SPRS) on the other hand.

If totalitarian and parties (co-)responsible for the war - SDS, HDZ and SDA - could be described as parties which accepted Dayton accords under pressure and directed their entire political activity towards their obstruction, alleged modernised versions of Haris Silajdzic or Mladen Ivanic could be marked as not direct obstruction of Dayton agreement but its so-called amendments. The non-existent essential differences between these two stands, because they can both be brought down to rejection of the Dayton peace agreement, determined the position of the Party for B&H and SPRS in the past elections - not as the alternative to the former single-ethnic concept of power, that is, as the true opposition, but as the offer for change of players but with the same rules of the game. Minor political parties, such as the Liberals of Rasim Kadic or Civic Democrats of Ibrahim Spahic in B&H Federation, which had also survived for years thanks to throwing dust into people's eyes, were practically thrown off the political scene by catastrophic results in these elections. Their previous votes are now divided between Social Democrats on the one and Silajdzic's or Izetbegovic's party on the other side. Following the same logic, voters of the former co-chairman of the Council of Ministers of B&H Haris Silajdzic in the general elections might further erode towards the left or the right. This can explain Silajdzic's defeat in Sarajevo Stari grad municipality where he was the first on the list of candidates but was beaten by the candidate of SDP Edhem Biber who is not even well known to the public.

Although the election results are still not officially conformed, after the first shock caused by unfavourable news, the ruling parties launched a campaign in the media about their alleged new victory and the customary promotion of the division of B&H between three ethnic groups. SDA on the one hand presented itself as the winning party, and on the other attacked the "naïve Bosniacs" that only they have knuckled under in the struggle for the "national cause" by placing their confidence in Social Democrats. The undoubted fact according to which fear of other ethnic groups is the only guarantee for their success is the basis of the already launched Izetbegovic's campaign for the second half of this match to take place in October. Due to the fact that SDP won the largest number of votes in the so-called Bosniac regions of B&H Federation, SDA is now warning the Bosniacs to return into their single-ethnic ghetto because it is allegedly the only road chosen by Bosniac Serbs and Croats.

However, a careful analysis of the present election results achieved by SDA, SDS and HDZ on the one hand and of B&H SDP and Independent Social Democrats of RS on the other, and their comparison with the votes won in previous local 1997 elections show that the fall of the three nationalistic parties and the rise of Social Democrats are almost equal. In comparison with the previous local elections, SDA, SDS and HDZ lost almost 50 per cent of the voters each, while the reformist forces doubled the number of theirs and in some places increased their electorate as much as three times. For instance, according to the currently available data, in 1997 out of the total of 500 thousand voters in RS, 420 thousand of the Serbs voted in favour of SDS and the Radicals, while this time 50 per cent less voted for SDS (about 240 thousand). Besides, votes of the Radicals (the party which was excluded from these elections by a decision of OSCE) were mostly given to SDS. This means that SDS, even with the votes of the Radicals, achieved a worse result than it won on its own in 1997 elections. A comparison of the results achieved by opposition parties shows that in 1997 Radisic's, Dodik's and Plavsic's coalition won just about 50 thousand votes. Now, just Dodik's SNSD alone won that number of votes, and B&H SDP for the first time won 15 per cent of the votes in this entity and entered the authorities in about 30 municipalities of RS.

In 1997 local elections, B&H HDZ had the support of 95 per cent of B&H Croats (274 thousand of votes) which was the greatest degree of identification of an ethnic group in B&H with an ethnic party. In these elections, almost half of B&H Croats voted in favour of opposition parties (120 thousand of the already counted votes), primarily SDP and New Croat Initiative (K.Zubak), but also some of the minor rightist parties, and HSS, while only slightly more than 100 thousand voters voted in favour of HDZ out of the total of the votes counted so far (votes from abroad are still lacking). A small part of the lacking votes belongs to the Croats from Central Bosnia who boycotted the elections out of protest against the sentence pronounced to general Blaskic in the Hague. For example, in Zepce, place with majority Croat population, local elections were won by SDA with an unbelievably negligible electorate in the municipality. Opposition SDP and NHI achieved the greatest success in the so-called Croat environments where absolute power of HDZ was eroded by the very foundation of an alternative party. The current successful start of opposition parties ranges from a couple to ten per cent like in Ljubusko, Busovaca, Kresevo, Capljina. In larger, to a certain extent pluralist places, the differences are even greater: in Livno HDZ has 35, and SDP alone about 32 per cent, in Odzak HDZ so far has 29 per cent of the votes, and SDP and NHI 22 per cent each, while in Orasje HDZ won 42 per cent of the votes and NHI and SDP 31 and 13 respectively, which is enough for predominance of the already announced unofficial coalition of these two opposition parties.

Izetbegovic's SDA nowadays seems to be the greatest individual loser in the tripartite SDA-SDS-HDZ coalition, primarily because in 19 municipalities of the Federation SDP won absolute power, but also because in another twenty odd municipalities this party is the leading one by the number of votes won. It should be noted, though, that SDP alone, contrary to other alternative parties, had been a respectable party even before these elections, which in previous elections had won absolute power in the quite numerous electoral district of the city of Tuzla, and ensured participation in power in majority of municipalities of the part of the Federation controlled by Sarajevan authorities. Besides, SDP - Social Democrats of B&H (which is the full name of the party) was created when last year former Lagumdzija's SDP and Beslagic's UBSD united, so 1997 election results of these two parties put together have in fact increased 2.5 times. But two times better results of SDP are sufficient for predominance in majority of municipalities in B&H Federation and absolute victory in the already mentioned 19 municipalities. This reduced the number of the once untouchable SDA in power to the present absolute victory in only 21 municipalities of B&H Federation.

Although the ratio of 21 municipalities won by SDA opposite to 19 towns won by SDP offers certain foundation for Izetbegovic's media promotion of the alleged victory of SDA in local elections, absolute figures on the voters that came to the polls show that a smaller number of them have voted for SDA than for SDP. In other words, the number of votes won make SDP the party with the largest voters' support in whole of B&H, which can turn this party in general elections in October into the ruling party in the state parliamentary assembly. While SDA won local victory in small places in which the whole electorate does not exceed for instance 900 voters, like in the already mentioned Zepce, SDP won absolute victory in much more populated environments such as Sarajevo, Tuzla or Zenica where the needed votes per municipal councilman are measured by thousands and the electorate in just one city municipality exceeds 40 thousand voters. Therefore, measured in absolute figures, just in Sarajevo - where it won absolute victory in two and relative victory in the remaining two municipalities - SDP has the support of more voters than SDA in several towns in which it has won a victory put together.

Besides, Sarajevo - about which during the campaign Izetbegovic used to say "This is our city, we have fought for it and nobody will take it away from us" - has become the synonym of the fall of the ethnic concept of B&H. Just as it was claimed in previous elections that democratisation of B&H was not possible for as long as its capital repeatedly supported ethnic homogenisation, it is nowadays recognised that Sarajevo plays the leading role in prosperity of the country and that the state capital is becoming the torchbearer of total democratisation. According to the present results, Social Democrats are the leading party in all municipalities of the Sarajevo canton, and SDA has certain advantage (allegedly of a couple per cent) only in the less populated Ilijas and Hadzici and in the municipality of Trnovo which is divided by two entities. In this most populated canton SDP has won about 42 per cent of the votes and SDA and the Party for B&H 22 per cent each.

And finally, the third characteristics of the just completed elections is once more ineptness, poor political estimate and analysis by representatives of the international community in B&H. Although throughout the campaign they appealed for changes constantly reminding the citizens that they were electing authorities different from those of absolutist nationalists in the past decade, on the eve of the elections they forecast a status quo and even expressed doubt about appropriateness of the elections and the awareness of the citizens of B&H. For instance, special rapporteur of the UN, Jacques Klain publicly presented his analysis according to which absolute winners of the elections would certainly be representatives of the current authorities in Sarajevo, that is, that ethnic parties would repeat their previous success in the elections. Director of the International Crisis Group in B&H James Lyon used to say that the citizens of B&H were not ready for the elections and that nothing at all would change!? After the preliminary results had denied these hastily expressed stands, the leading circles of the international community in B&H are allegedly preparing a final official announcement of the autumn general elections because they are starting to believe in the possibility of qualitative changes. According to information obtained by AIM, regulations are also in preparation which would prescribe that the mayors of future municipalities would have to be from the ranks of the parties which had won the largest number of votes, which would double the number of the mayors from reformist forces in. This would give the lonely mayor of Tuzla Selim Beslagic up to fifty colleagues from the Social Democratic block of the parties in the two entities. The announcements of B&H SDP of the steps it would take after the official proclamation of its victory in its municipalities show that before taking over power this party plans first to "lock up" the municipalities and make a detailed inventory of everything the totalitarian regime has left behind and done in its time. It is also planned to establish contacts and local cooperation between municipalities in which they have won power with the leading cities of Social Democratic Europe, since after formation of the cantons in B&H Federation and transfer of significant decision-making to the higher level, municipal authorities have de facto been deprived of power and their significance greatly minimised.

The first half has, therefore, shown that Bosnia is awakening from its nationalistic totalitarianism. Serious political studies claim that the maximum development rate of a political option - if it is the result of a gradual strengthening of the electorate and supporters and not a mass movement as the one established after the fall of communism by nationalistic oligarchies in B&H - is doubling of the number of voters between two elections. This has been achieved by the democratic alternative in B&H, and as comparison it should be said that a similar fall of totalitarianism took place in neighbouring Croatia where the former opposition and the currently ruling parties for the first time struck a blow to Tudjman's party in local elections in the capital city of Zagreb!

What the international community, that is OSCE and OHR, still have to do is prepare parliamentary elections. Apart from the wish for their best possible results which will lead B&H into democratisation, market economy and respect of human rights, there is also hope that these elections will be far better organised than the just completed local elections. By increasing the number of electoral districts by almost 50 per cent, OSCE has unfortunately given enough opportunity to local election commissions (under auspices of the former local authorities) to prepare voters' registers more than carelessly. Without opening the discussion whether this was in fact an attempt to manipulate or aggravate political declaration of the will of the citizens or not, the fact remains that in certain, mostly urban, environments almost one third of the citizens could not find their names in voters' registers although they had been in them in the past local and general elections. Of course, all the parties claim that these were their voters.

Ivana DRAZENOVIC

(AIM Sarajevo)