These lines are written on October 1, 2006, while the fourth general elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the Dayton Peace Agreement are taking place. In the preceding months, a strange development occurred both in the Federation of the Bosniaks and Croats and in the ‘Republika Srpska’. Since the formerly large nationalist parties SDA, HDZ and SDS were pressured by the international community to make concessions during the overall discussion on constitutional and institutional reform, other parties took over their positions.
In the Federation, the ‘Party for Bosnia-Herzegovina’ (SBiH) of former Prime Minister Haris Siladzic re-emerged on the political scene with the call for a total abolition of one of the two entities created by the Dayton Peace Agreement, the ‘Republika Srpska’.
In response, the Prime Minister of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik from the SNSD (in former times the favoured ‘liberal partner’ of the international community) developed a strong rhetoric, requesting a call for a referendum on independence of the ‘Republika Srpska’. This is a dangerous game since according to opinion polls 90% of Serbs in Republika Srpska do not accept Bosnia-Herzegovina as their home country and would prefer an independent Republic or the union with Serbia.
The discussion on constitutional reform also had its impact on the side of the Bosnian Croats. As a result, a new party developed out of ‘HDZ’: the ‘HDZ 1990’ led by the former popular HDZ party official Bozo Ljubic. The party defines the defence of the rights of the Bosnian Croats as its main aim, as did HDZ before. According to ‘HDZ 1990’, these rights would be endangered if the abolition of the proportional voting among the three ethnicities would be put into practise.
Thus, a grotesque phenomenon appeared on the eve of the October 1 elections. Since the former radically nationalist parties lost their extreme positions due to political reality around the constitutional debate, ‘new nationalists’ are fishing for their former electorate… In the meantime Bosnia-Herzegovina seems farther from Europe than ever. The state did not succeed in making enough progress to be able to sign a Stabilization and Association Agreement with the European Union within the near future. The High Representatives Office intends to close next year. Then Bosnia-Herzegovina will be left alone after 10 years of - de facto - international protectorate. It will be left alone with an unemployment rate of nearly 45%, a complicated, inefficient state structure (one established by the international community itself) and an expensive bureaucracy resistant to any reform. Ten years after the end of the war, which pulled Bosnia-Herzegovina out of the middle of Europe, it seems that it might miss the last train back.
Tatjana Meijvogel-Volk, Instituut voor Publiek en Politiek, Amsterdam