On the surface of it, you couldn’t be blamed for feeling pretty grim about the results of the recent local elections which took place on 2 October in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In both semi-autonomous regions, the biggest winners were the large, ethno-nationalist parties who managed to maintain and entrench their positions as the major political force in their region. Perhaps most symbolically of all, the city of Srebrenica, where the infamous genocide of over 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks by the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska took place in 1995, has elected its first Serb mayor since the end of that conflict, triggering alarm amongst the Bosniak population and a resurgence in public expressions of Serbian nationalism.
Bosnians were voting for mayors and municipal councils in Bosnia’s two semi-autonomous regions – the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat Federation. These regions have their own governments, presidents and parliaments, although they remained linked by shared federal institutions. The regions were empowered to largely run themselves after the end of the Bosnian War to maintain relative peace between the two largest ethnic groups in Bosnia.
In Republika Srpska, the Serbian nationalist party, the Independent Social Democrat’s Party (SNSD), successfully shored up their support through a nationalistic – and since declared illegal – referendum campaign for keeping the date of January 9th as the national day of the Republika, which took place just days before the election. The SNSD’s pro-Serb rhetoric has only strengthened, with incumbent President Milorad Dodik campaigning on a promise of Republika Srpska’s secession from Bosnia. The results show that such nationalistic rhetoric still holds a lot of power, with the SNSD winning 11 more mayoral posts and 30% more municipalities since the 2012 local elections.
Meanwhile, in the Bosniak-Croat Federation region, nationalist parties overwhelmingly defeated their non-nationalist rivals. The Party of Democratic Action (SDA), maintained their hold on power, despite reducing their overall number of mayoral posts by 12 positions since 2012, and have the backing of smaller, but still nationalistic parties in that region.
At first – and even second – glance it seems that the space for a third and truly multi-ethnic force to emerge in Bosnia is as narrow as ever.
However, if you dig a little deeper, these elections tell another, parallel story. While nationalism – Serb and otherwise – has not lost its potency in Bosnia, there seems to be a steady growth in support for an alternative.
Pro-European, multi-ethnic and socially liberal party Nasa Stranka, have almost doubled their percentage of the vote and their representation in Bosnia, and they have gained mandates in municipalities where they have never been represented before. Nasa Stranka fought on a platform of strong local service delivery, anti-corruption and powerful pro-Western internationalism, positioning themselves as a party for all of Bosnia, not one ethnic group or another.
The Liberal Democrats, through the International Office and with the support of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), has been working closely with Nasa Stranka for the past two years, specifically supporting them to increase their female representation. Nasa Stranka – described by some as the ‘women’s party’– has led on the issue of gender equality in Bosnia and, with the support from the Liberal Democrats for female candidates for council this year, over 40% of their elected councillors and mayors are now women. In Bosnia, where women remain under-represented in all aspects of public life, this puts Nasa Stranka ahead of most other political parties in terms of equal gender representation.
As ethnic tensions continue to boil over in Bosnia, it will be a tall order for Nasa Stranka to capitalise on their local growth to increase their power at the regional and national level. However, the surge of liberal support on 2 October certainly indicates that there are thousands of Bosnians for whom ethnic identity and harking back to Bosnia’s troubled past is no longer enough. A gap exists in Bosnian politics where a moderate, multi-ethnic and ideological party should be. With a little luck and a lot of hard work, Nasa Stranka could fill that gap and take Bosnia forward to a genuinely post-war era.
* Harriet Shone is Head of the Liberal Democrats’ International Office.
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6 Comments
I suggest the headline actually does the article and it’s author a disservice, I therefore think LDV needs to spend a little more time over some of its headlines.
This article is very factual and informative and in no way supports the statement made in the headline.
Excellent piece, our party, is the meaning of nasa stranka, and for us, if we were there, and as its friends since this Summer as a member party of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe , which that party now is, our party indeed !
Serbian nationalism is a dangerous threat, but it is a little disappointing (albeit unsurprising) to see the rather conventional and worthy focus on the misdeeds of Serbs, to the exclusion of a more balanced and comprehensive misdeeds of factions in that deeply, deeply brutal and bloody civil war. Liberal Democrats have to beware the trap of ‘playing favorites’ in complex conflicts where there is clearly no ‘winner’ in the competition of brutality.
Correction: comprehensive misdeeds of all factions.
Simply, a multi-ethnic Bosnia died if not during the first world war, then after the second. It is simply a dream and though the ARBiH may have tried to present itself as a multi-ethnic faction, it was not. It never was and never intended to be. Look at how BiH is run now and how feckless the Croats are to control their political fate. That’s how Bosnia would have turned out and that’s how Izetbegovic wanted it: A majority run, federal system, which would have meant Bosniaks controlled the entire country. Considering how they became a majority (namely, genocide) and simply that was never an option the Serbs would have accepted. The Croats joined the FBiH, and they are dissatisfied and unable to control their own political affairs. Multi-ethnic Bosnia is a dream. It never was, never will be. Bosnia is, and always has been, a graveyard.
You may be right, Zach. I would say that sometimes, historically speaking, liberalism has veered away from individualism, in the direction of the worthy middle class decency of geopolitical engineering. Let’s hope the Liberal Democrats will not be damned by history as second-rate Tony Blair knock-offs!
There is still time to change direction. More integrity is needed in UK politics, and less moralism and outraged hand-wringing about atrocities in other countries…
Atrocities which, in many case, decisions by some UK politicians have already contributed to!