Crumbling Down of Tripartite Authorities

Local Elections in B&H

AIM Sarajevo, 16 September, 1997

Less than twenty four hours before the election silence, local elections, that is, the entire election project of the international community in B&H, was faced with a total fiasco, but by Sunday evening, just a couple of hours after closing down of the majority of polling stations (in Drvar, for example, people were still voting), the head of the OSCE mission in B&H, Robert Frowick was beaming with happinenss that the world's most complicated elections were so successfully completed. This is especially true since the response of the voters was high - over 70 per cent of the registered voters had come to the polls, which was above all expectations.

On the day after the elections, everybody had already found the opportunity to express satisfaction with the results, although OSCE, having learnt the lesson of September last year, said that counting of the votes would take five or six days and that preliminary results would not be publicized. And while the voters settled down to wait for the results, through the voting committees in the municipalities in the field, results started to flow in. They are, indeed, not official, especially because votes of those who "voted in absence" were not included yet, but they are sufficient for the initial political analyses.

The general assessment of all, again, is that the elections were neither democratic nor fair, but they will, like who knows how many elections in B&H, be just a step further on the road to increased democratization in this space, in other words they will continue to be "transitional" for some new elections in the future. These certainly are "transitional" for the elections scheduled for next year. These elections were organized to make the local authorities finally legitimate. The existing ones are either the inheritance of the war and war conquests, or they are seven years "old". They are not legitimate, and in many places they are even illegal.

The ruling nationalistic political parties did their best to ensure their existing power by election engineering, but also to win it where they had not held it. The SDA coalition, for example, by threatening Tuzla before the elections that it would not receive aid from the federal budget if this coalition did not win in this city actually admitted that it had given nothing to this city from the federal funds. And proclamation that winning power in Tuzla was a strategic aim of the state was just one in a series of usurpations of the state by the ruling party. The HDZ and the SDS were also ruthless in usurping power, faced with the number of registered Serbs in Drvar and Glamoc or developments in Banja Luka region. In their arrogance, the ruling parties did not hesitate to reach out for the filthiest methods, including even terrorist activities (murdering returnees, planting explosive devices in party premises of "rivals" or houses of returnees). Terrorism was in fact an agreed use of fear for the sake of national homogenization. This strongest "argument" of the ruling parties proved to be also the thing which would deprive them of a considerable portion of the electorate in favour of the democratic alternative.

The election triumph of the oppositionist United List '97 in Tuzla (57.4 per cent, according to the data available so far), victory of Marceta's part of the Coalition for Return in Drvar and Grahovo, triumph of Dodik's Independent Social Democrats in Srbac and Laktasi, of the opposition in RS in Banja Luka, Sipovo, Mrkonjic Grad, Gradiska, which is also largely due to the political moves of Biljana Plavsic - mark the beginning of crumbling down of the absolute tripartite single-ethnic authorities of those who were the main protagonists of the war. When triumph of Fikret Abdic on his part of the "field", in the region of Cazin, is added to this, as well as results of Sefer Halilovic in Konjic, SDP and the United List '97 in Sarajevo municipalities, Breza or municipalities of Tuzla-Podrinje Canton, the shift towards democratization in relation to the general elections in September last year becomes quite obvious.

Defence of Tuzla, and even triumphant victory over the SDA coalition, taking over of the second biggest city in B&H, Banja Luka, along with everything else, is a sign that the electorate has started to cool off from nationalistic red heat and that instead of with "hearts", they have finally started voting with their "stomachs" and "heads". The political and the social situation is starting to mature with the help of increasing pressure of the international community, and this is the best sign for it - the international community - what it should do. Along with the pressure of the political stick and the economic carrot, the world has shown that it knows the practical utility value of the media in B&H.

The weakening arguments in the hands of the ruling parties - arguments of foreign currency accounts for soldiers, distributed other people's housing units, secret funds out of which social welfare is distributed only on the eve of elections, spreading fear, giving up of the SDA, HDZ and SDS on "their" Zvornik and Visegrad, Vares and Derventa, Drvar or Glamoc, and war and postwar profiteering - will continue to have certain power for some time. They will be used in the forthcoming period, time of implementation of election results, but especially afterwards - in strengthening of the cantonal authorities which will do anything, as we have already experienced, to reduce power of the municipal authorities to that of the former local communities and to deprive election results of all their value. However, things are definitely moving in the direction of demonopolization of power.

It is true that these elections pave a possible road of return of refugees, but it will be impossible without implementation of election results, and this will be impossible without pressure exerted by the international community. It showed how much it can do in a single day, the one from the beginning of this text - on the eve of election silence. Will it be willing to be quick and resolute again, now that it has the expressed will of the voters, although not utterly free, contrary to the previous three times expressed exclusive monopolistic will, will soon be seen. Along with it, it will be equally important to strengthen independent, alternative media or at least to increase pressure on the media which are controlled by the three still most powerful parties, HDZ-controlled television in Mostar, SDS's television in Pale and TV B&H of the SDA.

Zeljko IVANKOVIC

(AIM Sarajevo)