LONG LIVE THE ELECTIONS, IMPLEMENTATION WILL HAVE TO WAIT

After the Municipal Elections in B&H

AIM Sarajevo, 11 October, 1997

Nearly a whole month has gone by, and yet all the election results of municipal elections in B&H have not even been made public. The elections in B&H, as often stressed by the officials of the international community, were the most complicated in the world, but B&H even they must be aware of it, is not China with more than a billion and two hundred million inhabitants. The total electorate in B&H is smaller than the electorate of European capitals Rome, Madrid, Athens, Berlin, and nothing to say about London, Paris, Moscow. How can, therefore, anyone explain that the OSCE is not capable of informing the public about election results after a whole month? That is why it is not surprising that even the ordinary people in any of the Sarajevo suburbs believe that the OSCE is "fixing" election results. That leaders and high officials of certain political parties think that is no news any more. They have established a long time ago that a mild version of the post-Berlin congress from 1878 is happening in B&H.

And while the public has mostly lost any interest in, even if fixed, results of the game played by the international community in B&H and its political representatives, media are publishing a result of two every day, and this is followed by a narrow circle of those interested in them as some kind of an American soap opera. Although there are doubts that the soap opera is carefully "directed" or maybe for that very reason, the attention of the public and the fans is not diminishing. And that the directors are the very best is obvious from the fact that the "hottest" places have been left for the end, for denouement of the drama whose task is to keep the maximum of suspense. Results of the elections in Mostar, Brcko, Drvar, Vares have, therefore, been left for the end, although all of these places have less voters than Sarajevo, for instance. How can, therefore, one not be suspicious!

It is self-understood that the real interest of the entire B&H public was focused on Brcko because it is the town resolution of the status of which has been postponed for a later date. But, the local, minor "squaring of accounts" are not at all less important: the competition between the Croat Democratic Community (HDZ) and the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) in Mostar, Stolac, Capljina, Vares, Bugojno, Travnik, Novi Travnik, Jajce, or that of the Serb Democratic Community (SDS) and the SDA in Doboj, Prijedor, Srebrenica, Rogatica, and finally of the HDZ and the Serb parties in Drvar, Glamoc and Bosansko Grahovo. The duel of Fikret Abdic's Democratic National Community (DNZ) with Izetbegovic's SDA in Velika Kladusa and Cazin region which has especially escalated after the arrest of Ibrahim Djedovic, representative of the former party in the federal parliament, belongs in a special category.

What do results of the elections show? Two out of five largest cities in B&H have been won by the opposition. In Tuzla it is the United List 97 headed by the Union of B&H Social Democrats with Selim Beslagic as its leader, and in Banja Luka the so far untouchable SDS won seven mandates, while the Serb Party of Krajina and Posavina and the Socialist Party of RS (SPRS) with 12 seats each rank higher. The Party for Banja Luka has won 8 seats, the SDA 6, the HDZ 4, and the Party for B&H 3 seats in its parliament. As concerning the third largest city, Mostar, it seems that the stalemate between the SDA and the HDZ will probably remain for a long time to come, although the Coalition for Integral and Democratic B&H (CD - in fact the SDA coalition) in the city council of Mostar has 14 and the HDZ 10 seats. This stalemate is further reinforced by election results in six Mostar municipalities, which the HDZ and the SDA coalition have won three each. There is simply no space left there for the opposition, only the Social Democratic Party (SDP) will have a mandate or two here and there, but in Mostar, the HDZ and the SDA will remain to be the only opposition to each other as before. Among the cities, in Zenica, the situation is the clearest. The Coalition CD (SDA) has 33 seats in the assembly as opposed to 9 those of the SDP, 5 of the HDZ and 3 of those won by the United List 97. In Sarajevo, the last of the cities with more than a hundred thousand inhabitants, the Coalition CD has also won, but not at all with such a good result as in Zenica, especially not in the largest and most important municipalities, the Centre where the opposition, as opposed to 20 seats of the Coalition, has 10 of the SDP, 3 of the United List and 2 of the HDZ, and in New Sarajevo where the distribution of foces is almost identical, with the only difference that the SDP has won nine seats, and the HDZ three. In Novi Grad, the SDA Coalition has won 23 seats, and the SDP 7, the United List 3 and the HDZ 2. The situation in other Sarajevo municipalities (Ilidza, Vogosca, Trnovo) is similar to that in Zenica. The changes in the demographic and social structure of the cities was reflected in the election results. Those who have just come to the city have won domination over the native population, mostly the ruined middle class, workers and intelligentsia. In Banja Luka, something else is the matter. The action of Biljana Plavsic over there has destroyed the monopoly of the SDS and done a great favour to the opposition.

To what extent the "battle" for the space in the Federation was important is best illustrated by the sites of the clash between the SDA and the HDZ in Herzegovina. While in the comparatively well-balanced relation of forces in Central Bosnia was more or less known, Herzegovina or the question of "penetration of the Bosniacs towards the South" is causing political disturbances even after publication of the results. The newly created political situation is a good illustration for this relation, in which the Croats from Central Bosnia are going to the Hague, and leaders of Herzegovina HDZ (Markovic, Brajkovic and Bender) have been forced to leave their posts. Obviously, they all belong in the same "package" of measures opened by renewed American pressure exerted before implementation of the results, according to which the HDZ has won in Stolac and Capljina with a very tight result (16:15) and in Jajce and Novi Travnik (12:11), by five seats both in Kiseljak and Busovaca, while the Coalition won in Fojnica by five and in Travnik by six seats. The Coalition won in Konjic as well where it will have 13 seats, but it will not be able to rule on its own, because the B&H Patriotic Party of Safer Halilovic has won 9, the HDZ 5 and the SDP 3 seats. The Coalition won in Bugojno in a clear-cut victory (20:10), just as the HDZ won in Bugojno (19:9), and there are still no results for Vares, although the preliminary results have shown that the Coalition will prevail there too, although not decisively. These results are expected to show the world that it is impossible to divide B&H, in other words that it is more difficult to divide it than to implement the election results. And how difficult that will be will best be shown by election results in places where interests of parties from the Federation and Republica Srpska have clashed.

It will really be interesting to see how power will be executed in Prijedor, where out of the total of 65 seats in the municipal assembly, the SDA Coalition has won 24, and the SDS just 14. It is true that the majority is held by the Serb parties: SPRS 9 seats, the Serb Party of Krajina and Posavina 7, the Serb Radical Party 6. The situation is the same in Zvornik, where the Coalition has won 28 seats out of 70, or Bosanski Novi (the Serbs call it Novi Grad) where the Coalition has won 16, the SDS 15, the SPRS 14, and the SRS 6 seats. It will be interesting in Doboj where the SDS won 24 seats, the Coalition 17, the SRS 10 and the HDZ and the SDP two seats each, to see which of the two "natural" coalitions will survive: that of the SDS and the SDA, or the SDS and the SRS. Farrand has announced a special regime for Brcko. Out of the 56 seats, the SDS has won 17, the Serb Radicals 7, the Socialists of RS 6, and the SDA Coalition 16, the SDP 7 and the HDZ 3 seats. But, this will not be final, because Farrand says that "municipal administration will reflect the pre-war multi-ethnic composition of Brcko" and in this way, obviously reinforced himself, he will reinforce the special status of Brcko.

It will be similar in Drvar in which Marceta's party called "Homeland" has won 19 seats as opposed to 11 of the HDZ or in Bosansko Grahovo where he has also won the relative majority.

Implementation of election results which everybody vowed to do before the elections will now be tested. It is normal that leaders of Bosniac policy expect from the international community to take over power or at least partly in Brcko, Krajina and Podrinje, Vlasenica, Bratunac or Srebrenica, where they are victors at least in a relative ratio, but the question at stake is how they will permit implementation of power in Velika Kladusa where Abdic's DNZ has won 15 out of 24 seats. In this respect, in the media in Sarajevo, a campaign has already been launched against the OSCE, allegedly because the list of this party included names of men responsible for war crimes in Krajina. It is interesting that they had not referred to this before the elections and that this had not bothered them, just as they had not been disturbed by Ostojic's name on the list of the assembly commission for human rights. That they are seriously concerned because of the victory of Fikret Abdic in Kladusa is clearly manifested by the fact that Dnevni avaz, daily controlled by the SDA, published the sentence of the already mentioned Djedovic even before his defence had received it and in it laid all the responsibility which would have been attributed to Fikret Abdic at the door of Djedovic who was arrested in the by the police surrounded Assembly building, although a deputy with immunity. All that after he had been on the list of candidates in the previous elections and legally elected. Should general amnesty which Izetbegovic was forced to proclaim be mentioned at all?

After a whole month, the election results, indeed, are not a surprise any more. Possible fast implementation of these results will be surprising, though, or we will wait for the next general elections still not knowing what to do with the results of these. There will be no implementation of the results, it was often claimed, until the indicted for war crimes are not sent to the Hague. Maybe this process has already begun, since rumour goes that turn has come of five members of the Army of B&H who committed crimes in the valley of the Neretvica, and then Karadzic will follow. Until then and until the implementation of election results, everybody will express satisfaction. It will truly be felt, however, only by the really strengthened SDP, the victorious United List in Tuzla and everybody a little bit (except Pale, of course) because of political stratification in RS. If there is any cause for concern, it is due to the rise of the Radicals in RS which warns that it is not at all more harmless than the rise of their true leader Seselj in the Republic of Serbia. It is hardly any consolation that the Americans have recently called him a fascist.

Zeljko IVANKOVIC

(AIM Sarajevo)