Electionblog
This weblog follows all the important elections in the region with personal stories of participants and observers.
Archive October 2006
Mon 09 Oct 2006 - General Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina
On October the 1st, for the fifth time after the war, the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina have chosen at the General elections. They elected the three members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the MPs at state level, the entity and cantonal parliaments, as well as the President and the two vice-presidents in the Republic Srpska (RS) entity. A number of interesting developments characterise the recent election: a bigger turnout, a very active and organised civil society, a clear fight between nationalistic and everyday people problems rhetoric, overlaps and shifts of support between different ideologies and political parties and finally, peaceful and well controlled elections. The results were just partially expected, and all the details yet remain to be analysed.
By introducing passive registration, the BiH electorate increased with more than 400.000 voters and the actual turnout increased with 350.000 voters (total electorate 2.700.000 voters, turnout 54 percent). Civil society was organised in a pool of NGO groups called ‘Citizens Organised for Democracy’ (GROZD). GROZD promoted 12 priorities of civil society and called political parties to state their solutions on issues as unemployment, corruption, pensions, EU integration etc. Another group named DOSTA, meaning ENOUGH, pushed for active involvement of citizens in stating dissatisfaction with the stagnation in society and the bad economic situation. Both GROZD and DOSTA were corrective factors to the campaigns and were seen as influential groups.
Furthermore, the campaign itself was a clear fight between nationalistic issues of vital national interests of Bosniacs, Croats and Serbs. At stake were issues like abolition of the RS (demanded by the centre-right Party for BiH), referenda of secession of the RS (launched by Alliance of Independent Social democrats SNSD), or inequality of the Croat people in BiH stated by Croat Democratic Union (HDZ) and their split-off HDZ 1990. The ruling Bosniac Party for Democratic Action (SDA) and the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) were disoriented since the Party for BiH and the SNSD had taken over their right wing issues. Moreover, the SNSD successfully used social democratic rhetoric on economy and social justice combined with hard right-wing issues that brought them both sides of the electorate. The faith of other parties that campaigned on jobs, social justice, corruption, EU integration and everyday issues of people in BiH could be represented in Social democratic Party of BiH (SDP BiH), which held a simple and focused campaign on those issues solely, and was promoted by the GROZD as the party who talked the most on their 12 issues and presented the best solutions.
Nevertheless, the SNSD - who refused the GROZD platform - won most of the votes in BiH, had a clear majority in the RS Parliament, most of the MPs in the BiH State Parliament, the RS President and the Serb member of BiH Presidency. The HDZ - which rejected GROZD - won most of the support among Croat electorate. The Party for BiH – which in turn accepted but ignored the GROZD initiative - doubled its result in the Federation BiH entity and the party’s president became Bosniac member of BiH Presidency, dethroning the SDA president from that position. The SDP BiH only took a 15,5 percent of the votes for the state level parliament, thus increasing its amount of seats in the BiH Parliament with only one. With the votes of the Bosniacs and citizen platform oriented Croats and Serbs, the SDP BiH’s vice-president did become Croat member of BiH Presidency.
Bosnia and Herzegovina faces a decrease in support to the old nationalistic right parties but also a rise of new, urban centre-right or nationalistic-social democratic parties, while real social democrats - who cherish leftist issues, multi-ethnicity and civil values - face stagnation. The regularity of elections cannot be questioned nor can the will of the people whose turnout favoured slogans like ”100% BiH”, or “Go Forward Srpska” instead of Jobs, Justice, Future, Work etc. Why, it remains for deeper analysis, but it seems that BiH citizens chose, with pure conscience and clear mind, a status quo, just with different players for the next four years.
Posted by Davor Vuletic, International Secretary of SDP BiH on 09-10-2006 - 15:27:51 Reactions: 1
