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Change Your Life! |
Bosnian voters choose local officials in ballot |
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April 9, 2000
SARAJEVO, APR 8 (AP) - Bosnian voters are choosing about 3,300 local officials in an election whose outcome may determine whether the United States and the Europeans continue efforts to rebuild the nation, still led by the same ethnic groups that dragged the country into war.
International officials who administer the country under the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords have indicated that support for Bosnia may evaporate if ethnic parties opposed to a multiethnic society retain their hold on power.
Polls open at 7 a.m. (0500 GMT) Saturday and will close at 7 p.m. (1700 GMT). Preliminary results are not expected until Monday.
More than 2.5 million of Bosnia's 4.3 million people are registered to vote in the second municipal elections to be held since the Dayton agreement ended the 3 1/2-year war.
Since then, however, Bosnians have generally supported ethnically based parties - Muslim, Serb and Croat - which led the country into conflict in 1992. This time, international officials hope that voters will choose candidates willing to implement Dayton's terms, including the right of all refugees to return to their prewar homes.
If not, senior U.S. and other officials have warned it will be difficult to convince Washington and other capitals to keep supporting Bosnia financially and with peacekeeping troops.
Ethnically orientated voting patterns have long obstructed reconstruction efforts despite an American and European investment of more than dlrs 5.1 billion since the peace agreement.
"If we can show some achievement this year, we have the decent chance to convince the American people and leaders to continue the assistance," U.S. Ambassador Thomas Miller said.
More than one million refugees and displaced persons add to the complication of Bosnia's election process. Some 200,000 of them live abroad vote by mail, while the remainder remain displaced within Bosnia and cast absentee ballots.
Because of the complicated process of registration, voting and counting the ballots, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, charged with organizing, monitoring and implementing the elections, has not given a time limit for the announcement of the final results.
Logistically, says OSCE spokeswoman Tanya Domi, "there is no situation in the world like Bosnia. This is the most extensive 'out of country' voting operation throughout the world."
Some 150 tons of materials have been shipped by air or land for these elections. About 10 million Euros (U.S. dlrs 10 million) have been spent on the whole project.
The OSCE has eliminated one party and several dozens of candidates for fraud. The names of candidates removed after the ballots were already printed will be listed on posters plastered on polling stations Saturday morning to alert people not to encircle them.
New in this election, voters will not only be able to choose the party they want to be represented by, but the specific candidates of a party they prefer.
The arrest Monday of a prominent Serb politician, Momcilo Krajisnik, on charges of war crimes and genocide might boost support for the Serb Democratic Party by Serbs who are outraged by his arrest.
Prospects for change are stronger in several Muslim-dominated cities, where the opposition Social Democrats are mounting a strong challenge to the Party for Democratic Action of Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic.
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