SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Polls closed Sunday evening in Bosnia after an election shaped by economic pressures, a youth exodus and concerns over corruption, with some leading politicians stoking ethnic tensions that have divided the country since its brutal 1992-95 conflict.
Around 3.4 million voters are choosing the three members of the country's multi-ethnic presidency, lawmakers for the national parliament, and heads of institutions for the country's two entities: the Muslim-majority Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Republika Srpska, which is dominated by ethnic Serbs.
Bosnia has a complex web of governing institutions that were created by a U.S.-brokered peace agreement in 1995 in an effort to manage the ethnic divisions between Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats that gave rise to the war.
On Sunday morning, Associated Press journalists reported seeing multiple polling places where voting couldn't begin on time because of difficulties with new digital voting technology, a measure introduced to address earlier concerns over vote tampering.
Bosnia's Central Election Commission said that voting would be prolonged beyond the 7 p.m. cutoff at polling stations that had experienced delays because of technical issues.
Around 27% of voters cast their ballots by 3 p.m., the commission said, a marked decrease from 35% at the same time during Bosnia's last national election four years ago.
Pro-Russia Dodik wields influence despite not being on ballot
Taking center stage in Sunday's contest is a staunchly pro-Russia politician who, despite not appearing on the ballot, has dominated the campaign and inflamed divisions that have sparked fears of renewed instability.
Milorad Dodik, the separatist and nationalist former president of the Serb-majority Republika Srpska, has been banned from holding public office after being convicted of defying decisions by the international envoy overseeing the 1995 peace agreement.
Dodik has just returned from a trip to Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. His party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, is likely to win the election in Republika Srpska.
At his party's final election rally Friday night in Banja Luka, Republika Srpska's administrative capital, Dodik told supporters that Bosnia “is dead.”
“It is an impossible country. It doesn’t make any sense,” Dodik said at the rally, which was also attended by Russian Ambassador Igor Khalabukov.
Dragan Bursac, an analyst, said that despite Dodik not appearing on the ballot for the first time in nearly 30 years, he “is still in command. He is everywhere.”
“It is obvious that these measures to ban him from political life are not working, and he is using them,” Bursac said.
After casting her ballot on Sunday, Dodik ally Zeljka Cvijanovic, who is running for reelection as the Serb member of Bosnia's three-member presidency, called the vote “very important” for “a peaceful and stable Republika Srpska.”
Vote takes place as ethnic tensions rise
While Bosnia has been peaceful in recent years, some of its politicians have kept alive the divisions between the country's Bosniaks, who are mainly Muslim, and its Serbs and Croats. Bosnian Serb leaders like Dodik have pushed for the separation of their entity from the rest of Bosnia, which has led to concerns among Western countries that tensions could once again spill over.
One of the poorest countries in Europe, Bosnia is still struggling to recover decades after the war that started in 1992, after the country declared independence from the Serb-led former Yugoslavia and ethnic Serbs took up arms to carve out their own state and join Serbia. The conflict killed more than 100,000 people and displaced millions.
Bosnia is formally seeking to join the European Union, but progress has been stalled despite EU efforts to encourage Bosnia's divided leaders to work together for reform. Meanwhile, low economic opportunity has led to hundreds of thousands of young people emigrating in the last decade.
“We should change the old faces,” Durak Miler, a resident of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, said. “They have been governing for 35 years ... I think whoever comes next will work better for retired people and the poor.”
Bakir Izetbegovic, leader of the Bosniak nationalist Party of Democratic Action, said that he expected people “to choose what is safe and reliable for them at these elections.”
“I think people in Bosnia should not experiment, but rely on those who have proven themselves already,” said Izetbegovic, who is running for the Bosniak seat in the three-member presidency.
Bosnia's wartime wounds were recently revived by a public homage in Serbia and among Bosnian Serbs to the wartime army commander Ratko Mladic, who died in late August while serving a life sentence for genocide and other war crimes.
Bosnian Serbs view Mladic as a hero despite his conviction by a U.N. court over the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, and other atrocities.
Electronic election security introduced
Authorities are for the first time using electronic identification of voters and ballot scanners to prevent irregularities or organized voter manipulation, which have cast doubt on the fairness of previous elections.
On Sunday, some voters in Banja Luka expressed concern that the new digital systems could confuse older voters. Republika Srpska's interior ministry said in a statement that of 1,957 polling stations in the entity, there had been delays at 201.
Voter Radomir Vukelic said that he was satisfied.
“This is why I expect the results to be correct. You've got a scanner, you've got a paper, you've got it all,” he said.
Most of Bosnia's 75 political parties running in the election are organized along ethnic lines.
Izetbegovic's Party of Democratic Action has focused its campaign on efforts to keep Bosnia united against Serb separatism. Bosnian Croats, too, largely support their ethnic parties, including the Bosnian branch of Croatia's governing conservative Croatian Democratic Union.
Many people are disillusioned with politicians who use nationalism to avoid solving important problems such as poor living standards and an exodus of youth seeking a better life abroad.
“I don’t see that anything is getting better, from the moment I started to vote,” said Ivan Silic, from the southern city of Mostar. “We all know who lives well. ... It is better for (politicians), and for the rest of us everything is the same.”
