Bosnia and Herzegovina is marking the final countdown for the country’s next general elections, which take place in a few weeks’ time on October 7.
Although the official campaign only starts 30 days before polling day, all the parties have been out campaigning for months, and are expected to use this last month merely to intensify what many experts see as the most brutal pre-election campaign in years.
“This is definitely the worst campaign. We have one case of murder, cases of beatings … we never had that before. Many ask themselves: what’s next?” Tanja Topic, a political analyst for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, told BIRN.
Topic was referring to David Dragicevic, a 21-year-old from Banja Luka whose death in March has overshadowed the entire campaign in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity, Republika Srpska – and the attack on the journalist Vladimir Kovacevic, who was beaten in the same city in late August while returning from work.
