It was the day before the Bosnian elections, and in the northeastern city of Tuzla, the popular alternative band Dubioza Kolektiv was playing a get-out-the-vote concert to a packed audience. But even amid the excitement of the young crowd, Damir Dajanovic was not getting his hopes up. As long as the 21-year-old political activist could remember, his fragile country has been paralyzed by postwar ethnic divisions, corruption and a convoluted political system divided among Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs. “People are frustrated by everything in this country and yet, at the end of the day, they do not want to give up their ethnic alliances, either,” he says. “They say, ‘Yes, this politician is bad, but at least he is ours.’ I hope I am wrong about this election, but this is how it always seems to be.”
With partial results in after Sunday’s vote, Dajanovic is no doubt disappointed to see that the ethnic divisions that have stymied Bosnia’s political and economic development remain. But he, like many others, may also be allowing himself a glimmer of hope. While the Serb seat on the country’s tripartite presidency went to Nebojsa Radmanovic, the incumbent Bosnian Serb whose party advocates secession, the Muslim seat — representing half the population — passed from the hard-liner incumbent to a moderate: Bakir Izetbegovic, son of Bosnia’s wartime President Alija Izetbegovic, who says he supports a unified Bosnia and wants to work with ethnic Serbs. The Croat incumbent who won re-election, Zeljko Komsic, also promotes a unified Bosnia.
