ELECTIONS AT THE GATES OF MOSTAR

AIM Mostar, June 22, 1996

A native of Mostar who used to be a member of UJDI (Associated Yugoslav Democratic Initiative), and who is now a sympathizer of the Croat Peasants' Party, last Friday afternoon had no time to talk to AIM for more than three minutes. "Old chap, I have to unload a truck for ten marks. Let them all see me!", he said instead of commenting on pre-election Mostar. "Let them all see me" referred to the fact that on that very day due to his political engagement he was discharged from work. He had been a financial and commercial manager in a privately-owned enterprise in Western Mostar, and his political engagement had been bad for the owner's business deals with the authorities. This former member of UJDI is a candidate in the forthcoming local Mostar elections on the opposition joint list for the City Council. Since he had allowed his political engagement to jeopardize his existence, he asked the journalist of AIM to help him preserve at least a tiny part of it: "Before I receive my last salary, please don't mention my name, nor the name of my former firm. Afterwards, you may do it".

Despite vagueness of Mostar election arithmetic, local elections next week will at least clarify to what extent this city, and the Federation itself can count on its "united" future without deepening the already deep gap, and the people like the man from the beginning of the story will know whether in a foreseeable future there will be conditions in Mostar for creation of an ambiance fit for normal living.

Thanks to the intervention of the obmudsman for Federation B&H, Konstantin Zepos, the list of five opposition parties was included for the elections, despite the fact that

• according to SDA-HDZ committee - it was submitted too late, so that these elections will be an indicator of the frame of mind of the dumb-founded Mostar majority. Have these people, after the experience of the bloody war and strained peace, finally become convinced that Mostar cannot be fitted into a single entity in which, despite everything that has happened, it is possible to live normally, or, despite the killing and butchering the city, the very idea of Mostar has not been murdered.

The number of votes which the Associated list of B&H gets will be a clear barometer of how many people in Mostar do not show sympathies for either the HDZ or the SDA which have, since June 1992 and liberation of Mostar from the siege of the JNA and Serb volunteers, born the greatest responsibility for the destiny of the city in which both real and symbolical bridges have been demolished, and human lives simply shoved from one river bank to the other, or at the worst, to one or the other God. In the coalition of opposition parties, those citizens of Mostar who are not (any more) sympathizer of either the HDZ or the SDA, can find both national (Croat Peasants's Party, Muslim Bosniac Organization) and the civic orientation (Social Democratic Party, Union of B&H Social Democrats and the Republican Party), but also, which is not insignificant for Mostar, their local patriotic identification, because the list includes respectable citizens of Mostar (Croats, Muslims and Serbs) headed by Josip Musa, former manager of the aluminium complex and president of the former football team "Velez", who was highly respectable and popular in his city despite the fact that he used to belong to the unpopular stratum of socialistic bosses, because he belonged also to what was highly esteemed in Mostar - authentic citizens of Mostar.

Musa's list cannot be expected to make a miracle and it is more than certain that in the end it will rank the third in the elections, and some Prometheus or other as the former members of UJDI even lower, but if that third rank will take just a symbolic percentage of votes, than no miracle can be expected in Mostar. Mostar, and along with it the Federation of B&H, will live miserably at the bottom of its own divisions and lies in expectation of the final outcome.

Pre-election time has revealed faction struggle within the HDZ. The former right wing of "Velez", nowadays in the Rightist faction of the HDZ of Bosnia & Herzegovina, Jadran Topic, who is the head of the Mostar HDZ, was eliminated from the top of the list of candidates of his own party by the will of the centre, and the current mayor of the western part of the city, Mijo Brajkovic, was put in his place, as a considerably more moderate politician.

On the other, eastern side, there have been no such conflicts, but attempts have been made to expand: the SDA is not running alone in the elections but headed with the mayor from the SDA, Safet Orucevic, it formed the "List of Citizens in favour of United City of Mostar" which was joined by the Serb Civic Council which is active on the Eastern bank, as well as Kadic's liberals who are in the opposition until the elections, and Silajdzic's Party for B&H. There is nothing new about it, one could say about the SDA list of candidates, and one could also say that the SDA has found an attractive slogan which obviously will not unite Mostar, but with which it intends to unite its half of the city. They even used the Turkish President in their propaganda, who just twelve days before the elections became the first donor of the institution with a strange name - "Fund of President Alija Izetbegovic for Reconstruction of the Old Bridge and the Old Town".

If nothing else, these elections will mean personnel union of the city, because Mostar will finally have one mayor (without having asked the voters, it was decided he would be a Croat), and a single city council. However, experiences from higher instances show the insufficency of such political cosmetic - B&H also has a single president of the Presidency, and the Federation also has a single president, but that is not sufficient for either system to operate. Misunderstanding between the two parts of Mostar from the meeting in Hotel Ero will possibly just be transferred into the city hall on the model of the Federation.

That is why Musa and his list, if the citizens of Mostar become aware and do not turn their heads away from the member of UJDI while he is unloading the truck in order to survive after having been discharged because of the Associated list of candidates, will be a political refreshment and balance to the city paralyzed by simple logic of impossibility of those who waged war against each other to reach an understanding in peace, and by existence of a powerful criminal layer for which the unresolved Mostar situation is the most convenient one. That is why the appearance of the associated list is a political fact which will help political clarification of the situation in Mostar even if its complete fiasco certifies that heavy darkness of definite division has finally fallen on this city, and that the elections are just a complicated form of a census.

It is unnecessary to mention that media are "open" to Mostar oppositionists just enough to call them traitors, B&H Yugoslavs and similar. But, since Mostar is not a very large city, smaller even than the official statistics which built up its population in order to get more humanitarian aid, its citizens know very well who the media are talking about, but also who is talking in the media. "Our list is either the phoenix of Mostar or its swan's song", says the former member of UJDI, who is certain of one thing: Musa's list will get the votes of "the third Mostar", the one "which wishes to treat us whenever we show up in a cafe". And it is certain that the elections will at least physically bring the two parts of Mostar closer to each other - recommendation of the European Union is that the 77 polling stations for the reason of safety should be as close as possible to the former separation line.

GORAN VEZIC