With only weeks to go until voting day in October, Bosnia and Herzegovina is in the throes of campaign fever.
As in every post-war election cycle in the small country, with possibly the world’s most complex constitutional set-up, the campaign has been bruising.
But hate speech and historical revisionism are hardly novel concepts in the annals of Bosnian electioneering.
What is more alarming is the degree to which the upcoming polls appear to be careening towards overt illegitimacy.
There have always been structural problems with Bosnia’s elections. The entrenched dominance of the main nationalist blocs in the country – in no small part the result of institutional advantages afforded to them by the 1995 Dayton constitution – have defined the country’s politics for nearly three decades.
But never has the evidence of possible electoral manipulation and fraud been so well documented before the polls themselves.
Nor has the international climate ever been as hostile to the country’s continued sovereignty and territorial integrity, at least not since conclusion of the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.
Bosnia may thus be headed for the worst of all worlds: one in which the elections its marked by widespread fraud – but no one in the international community cares to do much about it.
The combination of domestic illegitimacy and broad international apathy is alarming.
With the last pretenses of the rule of law dissolved, Bosnia’s recalcitrant elites may well feel emboldened to initiate their most catastrophic fantasies.
Funny numbers
Presently, the main independent election monitoring organization in Bosnia, Pod Lupom, has reported serious irregularities with the country’s election roll.
Some 250,000 registered voters appear to lack identity cards, the primary identity document in the country, without which it is virtually impossible to access any government service.
While it is technically possible to vote without these cards, the number is worryingly high, given that it concerns such a central piece of documentation.
The same EU and US-funded organization has found evidence of organized identify theft, leading to suspicions of widespread voter registration fraud, possibly including significant portions of the above noted 250,000 individuals.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
