Electoral reform holds key to moderation

Date: 22/10/1998

The international community's attempts to undermine nationalist parties in Bosnia have at times come dangerously close to perverting the democratic process, argues Christopher Bennett

BOSNIA'S September elections were supposed to herald a sea change in attitudes and confer democratic mandates on politicians eager to implement the three-year-old peace plan.

Instead, most Bosnians again opted for nationalist hardliners. It may appear, therefore, that they have rejected both ethnic reconciliation and the international community's peace-building efforts.

But this is not the case. The results are simply the latest manifestation of a political system which panders to extremists and does not afford Bosnians the luxury of forsaking nationalism.

The outcome of the latest 33-million-ecu polls - the fifth round of internationally supervised elections since the war - is of special significance since elections have, to date, formed the cornerstone of the peace process.

'Democracy' and 'democratisation' have been presented as a panacea, as if the very act of voting will solve all of Bosnia's ills.

Proponents of the continuous-elections strategy argue that Bosnians have to learn democracy and that every poll is therefore a step in the right direction. As evidence of progress, they point to declining support in successive polls for the three nationalist parties which prosecuted the war and, in particular, the weakening of the Serb Democratic Party, the party of war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic.

However, although the proportion of the vote won by the three original nationalist parties has declined, this cannot be attributed to a new-found Bosnian appreciation for democracy. Instead, it is the result of calculated international attempts to undermine the nationalist parties, some of which come dangerously close to perverting the democratic process.

In order to speed implementation of the peace agreement, international officials in Bosnia have effectively taken over the running of the country.

In the process, they have ridden roughshod over Bosnia's domestic institutions, seizing broadcasting transmitters, placing supervisors into key television stations and restricting media access to what are deemed undesirable elements. They have also dismissed elected officials, engineered the appointment of more amenable figures and imposed decisions on squabbling Bosnians, including a national flag, currency and passport.

In the run-up to the vote, the scale of the international intervention increased. Favoured parties and candidates benefited from covert financial assistance and campaign expertise. The sums of money distributed - which have not been disclosed - were not great enough to have much impact on the outcome, yet sufficient for the international community to be viewed as partial and to alarm the nationalist parties. The US non-governmental organisation, the National Democratic Institute, more or less ran the election campaign of Biljana Plavsic's Sloga coalition in Republika Srpska.

Officials of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the elections supervisory body, complain of having pressure exerted on them to send out, together with the absentee ballots, campaign material on behalf of favoured parties - pressure which, it must be pointed out, they refused to succumb to.

Two weeks before the vote, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Bosnia to endorse publicly those candidates, such as Plavsic, whom the international community wished to see win, promising financial assistance in the event of their victory and threatening the withdrawal of aid if they were defeated.

In total, seven separate polls took place on 12 and 13 September: to the country's three-person collective presidency, the Bosnia-wide parliament, the assemblies of the country's two entities (the Federation and Republika Srpska), the presidency of Republika Srpska, the Federation's ten cantons, and a handful of new municipalities created since the 1997 local elections. In every instance bar one, the more extreme candidates and parties came out on top.

The breakthrough was in the contest for the Serb member of Bosnia's presidency. In this poll, Zivko Radisic, a genuinely moderate old-school Communist, defeated Momcilo Krajisnik, Karadzic's closest associate.

It should be noted, however, that Radisic's victory, which makes him president of Bosnia's collective presidency, was largely the result of a quirk of the electoral system. Voting in this poll is restricted to electors from Republika Srpska, but this includes ethnically cleansed Croats and Muslims as well as the current Serb residents. While the incumbent Mr Krajisnik was ahead after votes cast within Republika Srpska were counted, absentee ballots cast by Croats and Muslims accounted for his demise.

Under the Bosnian constitution which forms an integral part of the Dayton Peace Accord, the presidency has minimal jurisdiction. Power lies at the entity level; hence the significance of the election for the president of Republika Srpska.

In this poll, Plavsic lost out to Nikola Poplasen, the hardline leader of the Radical Party and associate of Serbia's most notorious warrior-politician Vojislav Seselj, whom US special envoy Robert Gelbard labelled a "fascist". Plavsic did not benefit from the absentee votes of Croats and Muslims, since the post is not ethnically defined and they opted for the Muslim candidate on the ballot paper.

The constitutional powers of the president of Republika Srpska were originally drawn up by Karadzic for himself and in theory amount to virtual arbitrary authority. In reality, though, Poplasen's room for manoeuvre is limited because international officials make all important decisions in the country. Nevertheless, this protectorate in all but name is not a long-term solution for Bosnia.

One way to create a self-sustaining peace process is systematically to redesign the electoral system to offer incentives to encourage moderate, multi-ethnic behaviour. The best way to achieve this goal is to require elected officials to gain some of their support from other ethnic groups.

Politicians who are dependent on the votes of communities other than their own cannot play the ethnic card without fear of destroying their own support base.

Similarly, electoral systems can be designed so as to encourage voters to express not just their first choice, but also their 'least-worst' option.

In other words, a Croat voter can be asked to choose not only his or her favoured Croat candidate, but also the most acceptable Serb and Muslim candidates. In this way, moderate centrist politicians dependent, at some level, on the support of all communities are likely to be elected, and the goal of multi-ethnic politics can be promoted.

Unfortunately, the incentives in the current electoral systems of party-list proportional representation for the various assemblies and first-past-the-post for the presidency go in the other direction, with the partial exception of the poll for the Serb member of Bosnia's presidency. Hence the elections resemble an ethnic census and those politicians playing the ethnic card perform best.

Had, for example, electors in the contest for the president of Republika Srpska been offered an alternative vote, that is a vote for their second-choice candidate, the likelihood is that Muslims and Croats could have voted for Plavsic as the 'least-worst' option, thus securing her victory.

Instead of intervening in the democratic process to try to secure the desired results on a one-off basis, the international community should devote its time to devising an electoral system which guarantees moderation in perpetuity.

Only in a system which builds in incentives for cross-ethnic support will Bosnians be in a position to reject nationalism. And only then will international peacekeepers be able to leave, confident that the country will not fall back into war.

Christopher Bennett is director of the International Crisis Group's Balkans project and author of Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse (Chris Hurst, 1995). The ICG's report on the Bosnian elections and other issues can be found on the Internet at http://www.crisisweb.org.

Author is director of the International Crisis Group's Balkans project Further information available on the Intemet at http://www.crisisweb.org.