Bosnia votes with wartime divisions still dominating

Bosnia was heading to the polls on Sunday after a general election campaign dominated by parties that identify closely with the ethnic divisions of its 1990s war.

Voters will elect a dizzying number of officials across multiple tiers of government, in a complex system that has held the partitioned country together since the 1995 peace deal.

Its key race will be for the tripartite presidency, split between Bosnian Muslims or Bosniaks, and the Serb and Croat ethnic groups, with frontrunners pitting visions of a united country against greater autonomy for the Serb-run entity while Croats seek greater political representation.

But the major parties' repeated focus on war-era rhetoric and division was frustrating for some voters, activist Adi Selman of the Karton Revolucija protest group told AFP.

"I don't think these new elections in Bosnia will change anything," the 34-year-old said in the northern Bosnian town of Tuzla, ahead of the vote.

"The choice is limited to political parties that have already been around for 30 years and basically pick up votes by harping on about war, tensions, divisions and the past."

The US-brokered Dayton agreement ended the 1992-1995 conflict but entrenched divisions that often paralyse decision-making.

It divided Bosnia into two semi-autonomous entities -- the Serb-run Republika Srpska (RS) and a Muslim-Croat federation -- linked by a weak central government.

On campaign posters and billboards in RS capital Banja Luka the face of the entity's former president, Milorad Dodik, beams out.

He remains the central figure in the Serb entity despite not being on the ballot after being convicted for overstepping his powers and banned from the presidency for six years.

His regular separatist threats have led to repeated clashes with the central authorities and stymied hopes of political cooperation.

"Bosnia and Herzegovina is dead, it is an impossible country," Dodik told the final rally of his SNSD party in Banja Luka late Friday.

Despite Dodik's two decades of dominance in RS, researcher Adnan Cerimagic from the European Stability Initiative (ESI) told AFP that it was "not impossible" for opposition candidate Branko Blanusa to beat Dodik-backed Savo Minic in the race for RS presidency.

"Dodik and his colleagues cannot be sure that they will be able to ensure victory for their candidate," Cerimagic said.

In the Muslim-Croat federation, Bosniak parties are pushing for a stronger central state, with incumbent Bosniak presidency member Denis Becirovic pledging a renewed path to the European Union and NATO.

But Cerimagic said little had changed on that front in years.

"The ruling coalition at state level has made practically no positive progress since 2024, either on reforms or on bringing the country closer to the EU and NATO," he said.

Croat nationalist parties are also pushing for electoral reform, demanding a greater say in choosing the Croat member of the presidency in the entity they share with the more numerous Bosniaks.

For 29-year-old environmental activist Sara Tusevljak, the political deadlock is a key reason many young Bosnians leave the country.

"I know quite a few young people who have left Bosnia precisely for these reasons, because they felt that their state, those in power, had nothing to offer them to make them stay," she said in East Sarajevo, which is in the RS.

"I feel that, in some ways, the situation has never been worse."

The start of voting was delayed in dozens of polling stations over technical issues, as the country rolled out biometric identification and scanning technology for the first time.

Polls close at 7:00 pm (1700 GMT) and first results are expected late Sunday.