Fazla
10-02-2006, 12:14 PM
Bosnians left divided after poll
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42153000/jpg/_42153754_counting-ap203.jpg Early election results suggested nationalists had done well
Preliminary election results in Bosnia suggest the country is split along ethnic lines, with Muslims favouring unification and Serbs division. Haris Silajdzic, who has called for Bosnia's Serbian enclave to be folded into the rest of the country, looks as if he has secured the Muslim vote.
However, Serbs elected nationalist Nebojsa Radmanovic, whose party has called for a referendum on secession.
International supervision of the country is due to end next year.
But the international community, which has largely run the country since the end of its war in the early 1990s, says Bosnia's constitution needs to be amended before the handover can take place.
Mr Silajdzic wants to unify Bosnia's two largely autonomous regions - the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic (Republika Srpska).
This might pave the way to eventual membership of the EU, his supporters hope.
Reform at risk
Bosnia's political structure remains divided along ethnic lines, with a rotating presidency comprising a Muslim, a Serb and a Croat.
With 40% of the votes counted, Mr Silajdzic had polled 38% of the Muslim vote, against 18% for his nearest rival, the election commission said.
The Croat vote was still too close to call, with incumbent Ivo Miro Jovic of the Croatian Democratic Union only marginally ahead of Zeljko Komsic of the opposition multi-ethnic Social Democratic Party.
But the vote in Republika Srpska looked clear cut, with Nebojsa Radmanovic having secured 56% of the votes so far.
Mr Radmanovic belongs to the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, which has called for the continued division of Bosnia, and even a referendum on outright independence.
The BBC's Nicholas Walton in Sarajevo says it looks like a large majority of Serbs agree on this policy, and that there could therefore be real trouble ahead on the issue of constitutional reform.
Voters also cast ballots for regional, as well as national assemblies, in a complicated system that was set up to represent the interest of all groups after the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Despite poverty and high unemployment, issues of ethnicity and nationalism have dominated the election campaigns, says our correspondent.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5398928.stm
Serbs block road to Bosnian unity
By Nicholas Walton
BBC News, Sarajevo
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/999999.gif
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42154000/jpg/_42154394_siladzic-ap203.jpg Haris Silajdzic has a vision of a unified country
At an indoor election rally in Sarajevo's concrete Skenderija sports centre a couple of weeks ago, an excited crowd filed in, waving banners and Bosnian flags.
One group, looking slightly unnerved by the noise and occasion, carried placards saying they were a delegation of Roma from the town of Zenica.
The rally was for the Party for Bosnia-Hercegovina, and it had all the glitz of a modern European election campaign. On a bank of television screens, archive pictures of the party's leader, Haris Silajdzic, flashed up.
Mr Silajdzic became an international figure during the war of the early 1990s, serving as the country's embattled foreign minister.
The wartime pictures on the screen showed a slightly bedraggled politician desperately trying to find a diplomatic way out of the bloody mess of the Bosnian War.
The Haris Silajdzic of 2006 looks like a very different man. Campaign posters show the polished head and shoulders of somebody so immaculately turned out and coiffed that he could easily be an American televangelist.
Nationalism sidelined?
His party campaigned on a platform of ridding Bosnia of its complicated political divisions. After the war the country was split into two halves - the Muslim-Croat Federation and Republika Srpska.
The message - to think of Bosnia Hercegovina as a whole, rather than looking to the different ethnic constituents - has evidently been a successful one with Muslim voters.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42154000/jpg/_42154396_serbs-ap203.jpg Bosnian Serbs have voted to maintain the status quo
Mr Silajdzic will now be the Muslim member of the country's presidency, beating off the challenge of the incumbent, Sulejman Tihic of the more explicitly Islamic SDA party.
Does this signal a shift away from nationalist politics in Bosnia? It probably does, but only for some.
Many of the country's citizens are fed up with a stuttering economy, high unemployment and ethnic division.
Many are also sceptical of politicians whom they see as unworthy of the responsibility of running the country when the international community plans to hand over power next year.
Compromise distant
In the Croat areas of the country the results suggest that the nationalist HDZ, which has long held power in a firm grip, could also be losing ground.
But up in Republika Srpska the picture is different. The clear winner of the Serb part of the presidency is Nebojsa Radmanovic. The leader of his party is the influential Milorad Dodik.
Mr Dodik has been campaigning heavily for a referendum on the future of Republika Srpska - not on whether it should hand over power to a more centralised Bosnian government, but whether it should be allowed to leave Bosnia altogether.
These election results suggest that many Bosnian Serbs agree with Mr Dodik's views.
That is likely to cause a great deal of trouble. Bosnia has largely been run by the international community since the war. The high representative, Christian Schwarz Schilling, now wants to hand over many of his powers to local politicians next year.
But for that to happen, difficult constitutional compromises between Bosnia's ethnic groups need to be made, with the two entities handing back power to a more centralised government.
With the Bosnian Serbs seemingly giving a powerful mandate to their politicians to reject such compromise, any agreement looks like being a long way off.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5399856.stm
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42153000/jpg/_42153754_counting-ap203.jpg Early election results suggested nationalists had done well
Preliminary election results in Bosnia suggest the country is split along ethnic lines, with Muslims favouring unification and Serbs division. Haris Silajdzic, who has called for Bosnia's Serbian enclave to be folded into the rest of the country, looks as if he has secured the Muslim vote.
However, Serbs elected nationalist Nebojsa Radmanovic, whose party has called for a referendum on secession.
International supervision of the country is due to end next year.
But the international community, which has largely run the country since the end of its war in the early 1990s, says Bosnia's constitution needs to be amended before the handover can take place.
Mr Silajdzic wants to unify Bosnia's two largely autonomous regions - the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic (Republika Srpska).
This might pave the way to eventual membership of the EU, his supporters hope.
Reform at risk
Bosnia's political structure remains divided along ethnic lines, with a rotating presidency comprising a Muslim, a Serb and a Croat.
With 40% of the votes counted, Mr Silajdzic had polled 38% of the Muslim vote, against 18% for his nearest rival, the election commission said.
The Croat vote was still too close to call, with incumbent Ivo Miro Jovic of the Croatian Democratic Union only marginally ahead of Zeljko Komsic of the opposition multi-ethnic Social Democratic Party.
But the vote in Republika Srpska looked clear cut, with Nebojsa Radmanovic having secured 56% of the votes so far.
Mr Radmanovic belongs to the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, which has called for the continued division of Bosnia, and even a referendum on outright independence.
The BBC's Nicholas Walton in Sarajevo says it looks like a large majority of Serbs agree on this policy, and that there could therefore be real trouble ahead on the issue of constitutional reform.
Voters also cast ballots for regional, as well as national assemblies, in a complicated system that was set up to represent the interest of all groups after the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Despite poverty and high unemployment, issues of ethnicity and nationalism have dominated the election campaigns, says our correspondent.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5398928.stm
Serbs block road to Bosnian unity
By Nicholas Walton
BBC News, Sarajevo
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/999999.gif
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42154000/jpg/_42154394_siladzic-ap203.jpg Haris Silajdzic has a vision of a unified country
At an indoor election rally in Sarajevo's concrete Skenderija sports centre a couple of weeks ago, an excited crowd filed in, waving banners and Bosnian flags.
One group, looking slightly unnerved by the noise and occasion, carried placards saying they were a delegation of Roma from the town of Zenica.
The rally was for the Party for Bosnia-Hercegovina, and it had all the glitz of a modern European election campaign. On a bank of television screens, archive pictures of the party's leader, Haris Silajdzic, flashed up.
Mr Silajdzic became an international figure during the war of the early 1990s, serving as the country's embattled foreign minister.
The wartime pictures on the screen showed a slightly bedraggled politician desperately trying to find a diplomatic way out of the bloody mess of the Bosnian War.
The Haris Silajdzic of 2006 looks like a very different man. Campaign posters show the polished head and shoulders of somebody so immaculately turned out and coiffed that he could easily be an American televangelist.
Nationalism sidelined?
His party campaigned on a platform of ridding Bosnia of its complicated political divisions. After the war the country was split into two halves - the Muslim-Croat Federation and Republika Srpska.
The message - to think of Bosnia Hercegovina as a whole, rather than looking to the different ethnic constituents - has evidently been a successful one with Muslim voters.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42154000/jpg/_42154396_serbs-ap203.jpg Bosnian Serbs have voted to maintain the status quo
Mr Silajdzic will now be the Muslim member of the country's presidency, beating off the challenge of the incumbent, Sulejman Tihic of the more explicitly Islamic SDA party.
Does this signal a shift away from nationalist politics in Bosnia? It probably does, but only for some.
Many of the country's citizens are fed up with a stuttering economy, high unemployment and ethnic division.
Many are also sceptical of politicians whom they see as unworthy of the responsibility of running the country when the international community plans to hand over power next year.
Compromise distant
In the Croat areas of the country the results suggest that the nationalist HDZ, which has long held power in a firm grip, could also be losing ground.
But up in Republika Srpska the picture is different. The clear winner of the Serb part of the presidency is Nebojsa Radmanovic. The leader of his party is the influential Milorad Dodik.
Mr Dodik has been campaigning heavily for a referendum on the future of Republika Srpska - not on whether it should hand over power to a more centralised Bosnian government, but whether it should be allowed to leave Bosnia altogether.
These election results suggest that many Bosnian Serbs agree with Mr Dodik's views.
That is likely to cause a great deal of trouble. Bosnia has largely been run by the international community since the war. The high representative, Christian Schwarz Schilling, now wants to hand over many of his powers to local politicians next year.
But for that to happen, difficult constitutional compromises between Bosnia's ethnic groups need to be made, with the two entities handing back power to a more centralised government.
With the Bosnian Serbs seemingly giving a powerful mandate to their politicians to reject such compromise, any agreement looks like being a long way off.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5399856.stm