SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina (AP) – Irma Baralija is waiting on Sunday, when she intends to vote and hopes to win her career, as the southern Bosnian city of Mostar is holding its first local elections in 12 years.
To make this vote possible in his hometown, Baralija, 36, had to sue Bosnia in the European Court of Human Rights for leaving a deadlock between two major nationalist political parties that prevented him, along with some 100,000 residents of Mostar , voting or running in municipal elections for more than a decade.
By winning in court in October 2019, Baralija believes he has “broken the myth (that nationalist parties) have been feeding us, that an individual cannot move things forward, that we only matter as members of our ethnic groups.” .
Parties representing only one ethnic group have dominated Bosnian politics since the end of the country’s devastating 1992-95 war, which pitted its three main ethnic factions: Serbs, Croats and Muslims, after the break-up of Yugoslavia.
“I hope that my example will inspire the citizens of Mostar, when they vote on Sunday, to be brave, to realize that, as individuals, we can bring about positive change,” said Baralija, who is running for a seat in the city council in the ticket of the small, multiethnic, Our party.
Divided between Bosnian Muslims and Catholic Croats, who fought fiercely for control of the city during the conflict in the 1990s, Mostar has not conducted a local poll since 2008, when Bosnia’s constitutional court declared its electoral rules discriminatory and order them to change.
The dominant Bosnian and Croatian nationalist political parties, SDA and HDZ respectively, have spent more than a decade failing to agree on how to do so. Meanwhile, Mostar was headed by a de facto acting mayor, HDZ’s Ljubo Beslic, and his office, which included ADD representatives, with no local council overseeing his work or the allocation of nearly 230 million. of euros from the city coffers they have spent in years.
Leaving institutions in full operation, Mostar, one of the main tourist destinations in the impoverished Balkan country, has seen its infrastructure collapse, repeatedly sweeping rubbish in its streets and leaving hazardous wastewater and wastewater dumped. to its only landfill. non-hazardous waste.
An agreement was finally reached between the two parties, approved by top European Union and US diplomats in Bosnia, eight months after the Strasbourg court ruled in favor of Baralija and gave Bosnia six months to amend the its electoral laws. the vote can be held in Mostar.
Mostar is divided in half by the river Neretva. During the war, the Croats moved to the western side and the Muslims to the east. Since the fighting stopped, the city has two post offices, two electricity and water suppliers, two telephone networks, two public hospitals and more, a dilapidated complex for each ethnic group.
On Sunday, several multi-ethnic and small parties will compete for seats in the city council after campaigning on bread and butter issues. But the nationalist parties HDZ and SDA hope that, among themselves, they will get a two-thirds majority in the council and maintain control of power.
While acknowledging that nationalists have armies of loyal voters mobilizing provoking ethnic mistrust, candidates in Mostar’s non-nationalist elections hope the past twelve years have shown that these two parties are too corrupt and incompetent.
“I think a lot of people finally realized that ethnic and abstract interests don’t make sense as their children leave (Mostar) en masse in search of decent jobs and a decent life” elsewhere in Europe, said Amna Popovac, candidate of the multi-party Ethnic Platform Party for Progress.
The nationalists now promise to solve the city’s many problems as if “the Martians and were not running Mostar, out of control, for the last twelve years,” he added.
Miljan Rupar’s name will also appear on the ballot. The 35-year-old, who is running as a candidate for the multiethnic Social Democratic party, decided to get involved in politics after realizing that more than 38 friends and family, including his sister, had left Mostar “for good.” in search of a better life abroad.
Rupar wants his city to focus on the future, as does the international school where he teaches physics, the United World College branch in Mostar. The school is one of 17 around the world and is run by a movement founded in 1962 with the goal of overcoming Cold War divisions, bringing high-level young people to live and learn together.
“When I walk into the classroom or attend the bi-weekly assembly and see students and teachers from all over the world, including from various parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who share the same values and goals, it gives me hope,” he said. . .
Political journalist Faruk Kajtaz, however, opines that hope could prove treacherous in the divided city, despite justified complaints from local voters. He points out that not only Mostar, but the whole of Bosnia has been politically and administratively fragmented along ethnic lines.
“Maybe too much is expected of the people of Mostar,” he said. “(But) the fact that the citizens of Mostar finally have a chance to vote for their local legislators is in itself a great victory for democracy.”
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Kemal Softic in Mostar, Bosnia, contributed to this report