Bosnia is holding a general election with citizens of all ethnicities focused on everyday problems SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Bosnia holds a general election Sunday in which citizens of the multi-ethnic Balkan nation are focused on everyday problems, while some mainstream politicians are whipping up war-era tensions that have kept the country divided since its brutal 1992-95 conflict. Once polls open at 7 a.m. local time, around 3.4 million voters in Bosnia will choose three multi-ethnic presidency members, lawmakers for the national Parliament and heads of institutions for the country's two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska. The complex network of institutions was created in a U.S.-brokered peace agreement that ended the war.
Taking center stage in the contest is a staunchly pro-Russian 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. Just back from a trip to Moscow where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Dodik's 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 the Russian ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Igor Khalabukov. Dragan Bursac, an analyst, said despite Dodik not appearing on the ballot for the first time in nearly 30 years, he “is still in command.
He is everywhere.” “He is all over the media, not only in the entity of Republika Srpska, but in all of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is obvious that these measures to ban him from political life are not working, and he is using them,” Bursac said. While Bosnia has been peaceful in recent years, 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 Bosnia 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 toward membership has been stalled despite EU efforts to encourage Bosnia's divided leaders to work together for reform. Ahead of Election Day, Durak Miler, a resident of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, said governing politicians “just poison people when they talk.” “We should change the old faces,” he said. I think whoever comes next will work better for retired people and the poor.” The country'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.
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