First they lost the elections. Then they started the war. By means of ethnic cleansing they carefully gerrymandered Bosnia to suit them. Now, since they won new elections by war, they are completely intent on winning the war by elections.
Dayton agreement provides for displaced people in Bosnia that they can decide to vote either in the places where they reside now or in places where they resided before the war. Authorities of Republika Srpska are making sure that all Serbs vote in places they currently occupy. They also make sure that none of the Bosnian Muslims or Croats dare to come close to the ballots there: just recently a single Bosnian Muslim returned to his house in Doboj - he was severely beaten by Serbian police and he died in an IFOR vehicle on his way to a hospital. IFOR did not intervene because their mandate does not include protecting individual civilians. Doboj has no mosques any more. In fact they poured asphalt over the places where mosques were and made car parking. There is reportedly no shortage of parking spots in Doboj now.
Elections are mostly a game of numbers. Former Yugoslavia never experienced a multi-party representative democracy. What it did experience was a brutal war launched on a platform of the ethnic prejudice. Obviously, we can't expect that elections, coming up so shortly after such a war, would be guided by anything else then. So, it is largely expected that Croats would vote for Croat parties, Serbs for Serb parties and Bosnian Muslims for Bosnian Muslim political parties. In Bosnia ethnic is political. If there would be only one single political party for each side and if all eligible voters would register and vote, Bosnian Muslim political party would win elections, since Bosnian Muslims are still the largest ethnic group in Bosnia, despite the efforts of ethnic cleansers.
It is not that simple, nevertheless. There are several Bosnian Muslim parties. Three of them are strong enough (Alija, Haris, Safet) to attract larger bodies of voters, thus reducing the number of votes for a "Bosnian-Muslim political option", making an absurd elections outcome possible: that Serbian Democratic Party actually wins the greatest number of votes in Bosnia. Of course, there are several Serb parties, too. There is a political opposition to Mladic-Karazdic-Krajisnik option in Banja Luka, heavily funded by the U.S., and in a desperate attempt to distract Bosnian Serb voter, OSCE even granted Zeljko Raznjatovic Arkan, commonly known as a war criminal (but he is not on the famous Tribunal list of 75 alleged war criminals), mafia don and murderer wanted by Interpol, $ 200,000 to run in Bosnian elections. Western media also seem to intentionally overlooks incidents where SDA tries to consolidate its votes by beating opposition candidates (like when SDA thugs beaten Haris Silajdzic in Bihac), realizing what an embarrassing moment would it be for the West if Serbian Democratic Party wins.
New York Times accurately compares the situation to an unthinkable event of having Nazis running in German elections after 1945. Not only Nazis are allowed to run in the elections here, but their SS Sturmtruppen are employed to provide security at the ballots. It is as if the creators of Dayton wanted to make sure that Bosnia disappears. The possibility of having this happen right before presidential elections in the U.S. is, however, too prohibitive for Clinton, who promised Bosnians a state. Therefore, while I am writing this, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee debates whether the Bosnian elections should be postponed or not. And various Bosnian, Croat or Serb lobbyists are trying to tilt the decision to their preferences, thus accepting without saying it that the ultimate fate of Bosnia is decided by the U.S., as the world arbiter (the role that the U.S. always cherished).
Numbers: Croats would all vote for HDZ, but since they are the smallest ethnic group, they would remain a minority. A bigger percentage of Serbs would vote for SDP than would Bosnian Muslims vote for SDA, but the overall number of Bosnian Muslims is bigger than that of Bosnian Serbs, so while it is certain that SDP and SDA would appear as major contenders, a winner is still uncertain. Plus, we should count on some Lebed-Yeltsin plot in Bosnia between various Serb or various Bosnian Muslim parties or both. Besides, all contenders in this elections are basically authoritarian and non-democratic, so there is a lot of people who basically do not want to vote (particularly younger) and just want to .
My friend's family is from Doboj. They are expelled from there and their possessions are either destroyed or looted. Now he lives here (New York) and next week he is bringing over his two younger brothers. They will get social-security numbers the very first day. He is not going to vote. And he has a lot of friends who share his decision, believing that their country is already condemned. He also knows that a lot of his friends who actually tried to register to vote (Bosnians are displaced to more than 50 countries around the world) with Bosnian missions - got rejected (like if they were underage in 1991) or their papers just got "lost". In fact there are 650,000 Bosnian Muslims and 450,000 Serbs and Croats who would vote in Bosnian elections from foreign countries. The ratio seems strange knowing that the number of displaced Bosnian Muslims is about 2.5 times higher than number of displaced Serbs and Croats from Bosnia. He blames the situation on Bosnian mission employees: a lot of them are Croats and Serbs themselves and more likely than not they are traitors. This might sound well far fetched, but it does have some ground: during the Bosnian-Croat war in 1993 a high ranking Bosnian mission officer coordinated a faxing campaign to gather support for Bosnian Croats cause and in support of HVO and Mate Boban. After the Washington Agreement he was fired. He now works for Croatian mission.
Therefore, it was not only important to postpone the elections - it was also important to:
Elections happened, nevertheless. International community estimated 60-70% of voters showed up. Yet just 10,000 Bosnian Muslims actually "crossed the line" allowing to be bussed to vote at their original residences. The irony was that they couldn't even see their house: IFOR took them directly to the ballots and then back to their refugee camp. Now, fearing parties would use elections to further fortify division of Bosnia, the U.S. are proposing another Dayton conference.
