used without permission, for "fair use" only

Let Frowick Hang

by Gojko Beric

Oslobodenje, Sarajevo, Bosnia-Hercegovina, October 7 1997

Mostar is the key of the Bosniak-Croat Federation, but Brcko is the key of the state! Both the opposition and SDA [the Party for Democratic Action, main Bosnian Muslim party] played this tune with the solid support from the International representatives. Nonetheless, the recent elections demonstrated that the pro-Bosnian electorate hasn't worked all that hard to fulfill these goals. In Mostar, according to reliable sources, HDZ [main Croat nationalist party] has won, while the supporters of the multiethnic Brcko, according to the first results, have been convincingly defeated.

Bosnian integralists put a lot of hope in the votes of the refugees and displaced persons, because only they were capable to change the present balance of power in a string of municipalities. Rogatica [in the Republic of Srpska] on one side and Drvar [in the Federation] on the other confirm that such reasoning was correct.

However, the expectations were not fulfilled. There are several reasons for that. A good number of refugees and displaced persons didn't bother to vote, and if they did vote in the places where they had lived before the war, they did that with a certain degree of speculation, because these people do not even think any more about the return to their homes.

The refugees were supported in such an approach by all three ruling parties. In one of the recent programs on the Serb Television "famous fighter" for the violations of human rights Velibor Ostojic couldn't hide that there is an agreement between HDZ and SDS [main Serb nationalist party] about inviolable borders between their respective territories, saying that the Serbs led by Mile Marceta "were enticed to vote in Drvar". SDA spent most of its pre-election energy on the conquest of "red Tuzla", but was in the end defeated. Unlike the Tuzla region, Brcko, it seems wasn't deemed terribly important.

In the Mostar municipality before the war there were somewhat more Bosniaks than Croats, while the election results portray a different situation. The balance could have been shifted to the side of undivided Mostar by the Mostar Serbs who were a fifth of population before the war. However, for most of them Mostar only represents the past. What happened with Bosniaks from Brcko in these elections? Before the war they were two thirds of the population in that town. In Stolac, before the war there were ten percent more Bosniaks than Croats, but HDZ has still won four mandates more than Izetbegovic's Coalition [for undivided and democratic Bosnia-Hercegovina].

The losers are now publishing statements and holding press conferences. All of them are pointing at the OSCE chief Robert Frowick, blaming him for the failure on main battlefields for the defense of the undivided state.

It is certain that in this electoral operation Frowick shares some blame. Maybe he has even made some agreements with Milosevic and Tudman and now doesn't know how to please everyone and still make the whole business clean. As far as that is concerned, the easiest thing to do is to scream: Let Frowick hang!

Yet, it would be much more useful to look for those responsible for the failure among ourselves.

Translated on 10/27/97