Nationalists gain ground in Bosnia election, raising fears of deeper instability

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina (AP) — An election in Bosnia on Sunday saw nationalist parties gain strength and the elevation of a separatist, pro-Russia leader in the Balkan country where ethnic tensions have led to political deadlock and stalled progress in moving closer to the European Union. Bosnian Serb nationalist politician Milorad Dodik, who is banned from holding office and did not appear on the ballot, in a victory speech on Sunday credited U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to power and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s support for his Alliance of Independent Social Democrats’ decisive win.

Dodik’s ally, Zeljka Cvijanovic, took more than 55% of votes to be elected to her second term on Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, representing the country’s Serb-majority entity of Republika Srpska. Dodik’s party’s candidate for the entity’s own president, Savo Minic, also won decisively. In Bosnia’s other entity, the Bosniak-Croat Federation, Darijana Filipovic of the nationalist Croatian Democratic Union appeared set to take the Croat seat on the presidency.

The center-left incumbent Denis Becirovic of the Social Democratic party was ahead in the race for the Bosniak seat. Kurt Bassuener, an analyst and co-founder of the Democratization Policy Council, a Berlin-based think-tank, said Bosnia’s nationalist parties “all gained ground” in the election, which he believes could lead to further instability that has plagued and divided Bosnia since its brutal 1992-95 war. Political complexity slows progress toward EU Around 3.4 million voters on Sunday were eligible to choose the three members of the country’s multi-ethnic tripartite presidency, lawmakers for the national parliament, and heads of institutions for the country’s two entities: the Bosniak-majority Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Republika Srpska, which is dominated by ethnic Serbs.

Bosnia has a complex web of governing institutions that were created by a U.S.-brokered peace agreement in 1995 in an effort to manage the ethnic divisions between Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats that gave rise to the war, which killed over 100,000 people and displaced millions. That political complexity, and the ethnic tensions which have been inflamed by some of Bosnia’s politicians, has blocked Bosnia’s progress toward joining the EU despite the bloc’s efforts to encourage the country’s divid…