26.09.1996

Predictable divisions

The elections in Bosnia are over. They were held under the supervision and observation of the outside world, in the expectation that they would start Bosnia on the road to normality. A feature of the New World Order’s (essentially ‘Western’) mentality is that multi-party elections are all-important. The American anarchist Emma Goldman is reputed to have said that elections were the opium of the people: “Every four years you dull the pain.” Western institutions have generally adored this opium, although when the rule of capital is seriously threatened, a spot of military or even fascist dictatorship is all right too.

Bosnia, this latest candidate for the anaesthetic, does not look like benefiting from the experience. There is no evidence that the results have healed the wounds arising from the fighting.

The three main communities in Bosnia - Muslim, Serb and Croat - have all chosen nationalists, in preference to more ‘moderate’ voices. Bosnian Muslim Alija Izetbegovic won a narrow majority over the Serb separatist Momcilo Krajisnik, with a Croat some way behind in third place. This totally predictable ethnic split retards reconciliation and maintains the de facto division of Bosnia into three statelets.

However, it is not clear how accurately the election results genuinely represent opinion. In at least some cases, they seem to represent only the diligence with which ballot boxes have been stuffed. Reportedly attempts were being made to conceal the extent of the fraud, which is said to be worst in the Bosnian Muslim areas. If the results are not accepted or acceptable, then the elections are useless, even on the limited terms of bourgeois democracy.

Despite the ballot rigging, the elections have demonstrated just as clearly as the years of fighting the falseness of the claim, expounded by many on the left, that the Muslim-dominated central government somehow represented progressive ethnic cooperation. This false premise, totally bereft of class analysis, led many to lend their wholehearted support to the reactionary Bosnian authorities, if not imperialism itself.

The Czech bourgeois politician Tomas Masaryk is reputed to have told Czechoslovakia’s competing ethnic groups just after World War I that they did not necessarily have to love each other to live together in peace. In Bosnia, it does not look as though the elections will fulfil this goal, whether or not they are crooked.

Andrew MacKay