Quo vadis Bosnia?

One of the quirks of covering a whole region is that you're never far off an election. In my year or so in the Balkans I’ve covered a few. They're pretty straightforward in their format: two or three main parties or candidates battle it out for a parliamentary majority or the Presidency. But with Bosnia, it wasn't quite so simple.

Five Presidents, thirteen Prime Ministers and 700 MPs – that’s what was at stake in the Bosnian election. The reason is the horribly complex constitution which ended the war between the country's Serbs, Croats and Muslims in 1995.

Bosnia was split into two semi-autonomous entities – a Serb-dominated Republika Srpska or Serb Republic and a Muslim-Croat Federation. It's made for a political mess, leaving Bosnia far from its goal of EU and NATO membership.

The international community, increasingly worried about Bosnia's stagnation, hoped this election might change things and finally allow the deep political and ethnic divisions to be overcome. But the pre-election campaign was marred by inflammatory nationalist rhetoric from parties appealing to their core ethnic vote.

Milorad Dodik, running for President of Republika Srpska, frequently raised the idea of Serbs seceding from Bosnia altogether. A Croat party campaigned for a separate Croat entity and some Muslim – or Bosniak – politicians resorted to jingoism.

As for the results, there were some grounds for optimism among those wanting to see a united, multi-ethnic Bosnia. Bakir Izetbegovic, son of the wartime leader, unseated Haris Silajdzic to become the Muslim member of the state tripartite Presidency. He's less hardline than Silajdzic, who was often seen as a roadblock to reform, and has called for cooperation with the other ethnic groups. The Croat-led SDP party did well in parliamentary elections: it's multi-ethnic and moderate.

But there's a different picture among the Bosnian Serbs. Milorad Dodik easily won President of the entity and his colleague, Nebojsa Radmanovic, also a hardliner, was re-elected Serb member of the state Presidency.

Nationalism still wins votes among those who fear that their voices won't be heard and their interests served in a centralized Muslim-dominated state. Bosnia's unwieldy political structure has to be streamlined for EU membership – but political reform requires consensus and that is still so elusive in Bosnia.

And so where have these elections left what is still the most fragile country in the Balkans? The answer is not in a very different place to where it was beforehand. Signs of progress in some camps are offset by hardened nationalism in others.

There are many, mainly young, Bosnians who see themselves as just that – Bosnians, rather than ethnic Serbs, Croats or Muslims. They sip coffees together in Sarajevo's trendy bars and cheer for the Bosnian football team, rather than that of Serbia or Croatia.

But there are also those who live a mono-ethnic life and who mistrust 'the other'. Politicians have done little to bring the two sides together in these elections. And so, still, there is the fear that this tiny and beautiful country could yet become a failed state.

Author: Mark Lowen

Editor: Neil King