BOSNIA - LOOMING POLITICAL CRISIS OVER SREBRENICA

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 SARAJEVO 000735 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR EUR(DICARLO),EUR/SCE(HOH/FOOKS/STINCHCOMB); NSC FOR BRAUN; OSD FOR BIEN E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/01/2015 TAGS: PREL PGOV PHUM PINR KDEM KAWC BK SUBJECT: BOSNIA - LOOMING POLITICAL CRISIS OVER SREBRENICA Classified By: DCM Judith Cefkin. Reason 1.4(b) and (d). ¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: The Central Election Commission (CEC) plans to announce on May 8 that municipal elections will take place on October 5. In Srebrenica, Bosniaks currently hold the mayoralty and majority of the 27 seats on the Municipal Assembly (17; Serbs hold the other 10 seats). There is a reasonable prospect that after the 2008 elections the Serbs will control the entire Srebrenica municipal administration. This outcome -- coming a year after the ICJ judgment that genocide took place in and around Srebrenica in July 1995 -- could provoke another destabilizing political crisis. OHR has been exploring what steps the international community might take prior to May 8 -- the date by which any proposed changes to state and entity election laws must be made. Based on our conversations with OHR staff, possible options fall into two broad categories: 1) Measures designed to increase the potential pool of Bosniak voters in Srebrenica; and, 2) Measures designed to prevent outvoting and encourage consensus in municipal decision-making. The first would be aimed at increasing the prospects that Bosniaks retain control of at least some of the municipal administration; the second at protecting Bosniak interests should they lose control of it completely. ¶2. (C) The HighRep has not yet made any decision about how to proceed, but plans to present possible solutions to the Steering Board Ambassadors (SBA) on Friday, April 25. The HighRep and others, including the Ambassador and the OHR Special Envoy for Srebrenica Cliff Bond, have already stressed to Bosniak and Serb political leaders that there needs to be a dialogue on Srebrenica. We will continue to press this point with Republika Srpska (RS) PM Dodik and others. Nonetheless, the prospects for the two sides would reaching consensus given their political differences and the limited time available seem limited. Our OHR contacts predict that the HighRep will need to use his Bonn Powers, if the international community is serious about finding a solution. The problem is that any action is likely to provoke a crisis with the RS and Dodik, who has already warned against the use of the Bonn Powers over Srebrenica. On the other hand, letting events take their course is likely to lead to a situation that will provoke a crisis with Bosniak political leaders and the Islamic Community. Finally, another problem is that any solution, if not structured very carefully, could create a precedent that would complicate the situation in other parts of Bosnia. END SUMMARY Passive Voter Registration -------------- ¶3. (SBU) Bosnian voters will generally cast their ballots in their current municipality of residence rather than their 1991 municipality of residence. Voters are automatically registered to vote in their municipality of residence when they obtain their identity cards, so-called CIPS cards. This Passive Voter Registration (PVR) was introduced in 2005, with strong support from the international community, and replaced the system of active registration that had been in place since 1996. The aim was to increase turnout, which had declined from 80% in the 1996 general elections to 46% in 2004 municipal elections, by simplifying voter registration. Voter registration is rolling and voters' lists are updated by the CEC every month. "Regular voters" have until August 21 to register. Regular Voters -------------- ¶4. (SBU) As of March 2008, Serb voters resident in Srebrenica (those with ID cards listing Srebrenica as their municipality of residence, referred to as so-called "regular voters") outnumbered Bosniak voters resident in Srebrenica by almost four-to-one: 6,246 Serbs to 1,665 Bosniaks, according to CEC data compiled by the OSCE. This situation is not new; the number of regular voters in Srebrenica has been artificially skewed towards the Serbs since -- and because of -- the genocide. Bosniaks have relied on absentee votes to maintain control of Srebrenica's municipal administration. Absentee ballots have been cast by two categories of voter: 1) displaced persons (DPs) within Bosnia, and 2) members of the Bosniak Diaspora abroad. The absolute number of voters in SARAJEVO 00000735 002 OF 004 both categories has been declining, as has turnout among registered voters of both groups. Displaced Persons -------------- ¶5. (SBU) State-level election law provides DPs with a special right to choose their voting option. DPs may either: a) vote in their current municipality; b) vote in their 1991 municipality of residence as an absentee voter; or, c) vote in their 1991 municipality of residence in person (confusingly, if DPs choose this option, they are classified as "regular voters" as if they were resident in the municipality). DPs must inform the CEC which voting option they will exercise prior to July 22. In this sense, DP voter registration is active, not passive. Only if DPs make no choice at all are they automatically registered to vote, in that case with the same option chosen at the last election. As of March 2008, 4,287 Bosniak DPs have registered to cast their ballot in the Srebrenica municipal election; 352 Serb DPs have done the same. ¶6. (SBU) DP status is granted by entity ministries of displaced persons, but the state-level Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees (MHRR) is responsible for compiling the entity data into a list used by the CEC to compile the DP voters' list. Only those recognized as DPs by July 22 may vote as DPs in the 2008 municipal elections. DPs are issued temporary ID cards. If they obtain a permanent ID in their current municipality of residence, for whatever reason, they automatically lose their DP status, no longer enjoy special DP voting rights, and through PVR, are registered to vote in the current municipality of residence. Many DPs have chosen to obtain ID cards in the Federation to exercise social benefits, which is one reason why the pool of DP voters in Srebrenica (and other municipalities that experienced ethnic cleansing) has declined. Many returnees in the RS have ID cards issued in the Federation as well, which reduces the pool of Bosniak regular voters in Srebrenica. It is worth noting that during the 2006 election the CEC only loosely enforced provisions forbidding former DPs with permanent ID cards from exercising DP voting rights. The Bosniak Diaspora -------------- ¶7. (SBU) Diaspora voter registration is active, not passive. Members of the Diaspora may vote only as long as they maintain their Bosnian citizenship and only in their 1991 municipality of residence. The CEC is responsible for checking Diaspora registrations against the 1991 census and verifying their eligibility to vote in a specific municipality. The number of Diaspora voters has declined dramatically over the years. Article 17 of the Law on Citizenship provides for the automatic loss of Bosnian citizenship if a Bosnian becomes the citizen of another country unless Bosnia and the country in question have signed a dual citizenship agreement. Most of countries in which the Bosniak Diaspora is now resident, including the U.S., do not, as a matter of policy, negotiate dual citizenship agreements. By contrast, Bosnia has dual citizenship agreements with Serbia and Croatia. Article 17 is not an immediate issue for the 2008 municipal election, since previous HighReps have suspended its effective date until 2013, but it may well be raised by Bosniak political leaders who have sought its repeal. Unsurprisingly, the Serbs have blocked any change. Legal Options for Increasing the Bosniak Voter Pool -------------- -------------- ¶8. (C) One option under consideration within OHR is amending the state-level election law to allow all 1991 residents of Srebrenica the right to vote there regardless of whether or not they have a) returned and obtained a permanent ID card in the RS, or b) maintained their DP status. SDA MP Sadik Ahmetovic proposed such an amendment, but it was defeated by the Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee on February ¶29. (Note: The amendment angered Bosniaks cleansed from other parts of the RS during the 1992-1995 war, who argued that they had as much of a moral claim as residents of Srebrenica to special voting rights. Ahmetovic submitted a second proposal that would have provided voting rights to all Bosnians based on the 1991 census, but this, too, was SARAJEVO 00000735 003 OF 004 defeated.) Bosniak political parties would still need to organize effectively and get out the vote in order to take advantage of the expanded pool of voters. Bosniak coordination would need to include settling on a single candidate for mayor. The candidate would also need to be serious and mature, which is more problematic than it sounds, since we have heard rumors that Bosniak parties might coalesce around Camil Durakovic, leader of the 2007 Srebrenica secession movement, who currently resides in Srebrenica. The RS Law on Local Self-Government -------------- ¶9. (C) The Republika Srpska (RS) Law on Local Self-Government regulates the organization of municipal bodies in the RS, including the executive (i.e., election, rights and duties, status),legislative (i.e., competence, main rules of decision-making),and municipal administration. The provisions of the Law on Local Self-Government apply equally to all municipalities. The international community, including OHR, played an important role in drafting this law (as well as the corresponding law in the Federation). The aim was to simplify and rationalize municipal organization. According to OHR, the system the international community helped put in place leaves little room for special arrangements for a municipality without amending the Law on Local Self-Government, but such a change would likely be necessary to allow amendments to the Srebrenica Municipal Statute that provided for greater consensus or special protections in decision-making and/or some guaranteed ethnic proportionality within the Srebrenica municipal administration. The problem is that Dodik and other RS officials have already signaled they oppose amendments to the RS Law on Self-Government. The other problem with pursuing an option limited to the municipal statute is that it is unlikely to satisfy Bosniaks even as its imposition is likely to provoke a crisis with RS authorities. The Srebrenica Municipal Resolution of Special Status -------------- -------------- ¶10. (C) On March 24, 2007, the Srebrenica Municipal Assembly adopted a resolution on Srebrenica, which among other things, called for the Municipal Assembly "to pass a decision on the separation of Srebrenica municipality from the constitutional-legal order of the entity Republika Srpska and setting Srebrenica under the exclusive jurisdiction of Bosnia and Herzegovina," if certain demands were not met by July 11, ¶2007. The resolution was part of the secession movement that developed with the support of the political leadership from the Party for BiH (SBiH),Party for Democratic Action (SDA), and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the wake of the ICJ verdict. OHR and other members of the international community, including the U.S., strongly condemned the resolution as well as any movement aimed at unilaterally redrawing the country's internal boundaries. The Serbs within the Municipal Assembly demanded the resolution's repeal, but this never happened. OHR is considering use of the Bonn Powers to annul it as part of any effort to address other issues in Srebrenica. The thinking within OHR is that such an action might mitigate the impact among Serbs of the imposition aimed at addressing the larger problem of potential Serb control of the municipality. Comment: Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place -------------- -- ¶11. (C) The October 2008 municipal elections in Srebrenica may well result in RS-based parties controlling the entire municipal administration. This issue is increasingly on the minds of the Bosniaks, both national political leaders, such as Bosniak member of the Tri-Presidency Haris Silajdzic and the Reis-ul-ulema, and local political leaders, such as Bosniak Mayor of Srebrenica Abduraham Malkic (all three of them have raised this issue with us). Such an outcome may reflect current demographics on the ground, but it has the potential to provoke a serious political crisis given the genocide that took place there. The Mothers of Srebrenica have sent a letter to the HighRep describing their fear that "the perpetrators of genocide take power in a 'democratic' way over the victims themselves." The Mother's, echoing what we heard from the Reis and other Bosniaks, have requested SARAJEVO 00000735 004 OF 004 that the international community take "all possible measures" to protect them. There is a consensus within the international community here that it should act to head off a potential crisis. ¶12. (C) Clearly, the best option would be to broker an agreement among the local players themselves. OHR Special Envoy Bond has been actively engaging the key players to do just this, but the legal options are limited and Dodik has already made clear that amending RS law, which would be necessary, is unacceptable. Unfortunately, the Serbs and Bosniaks currently are presenting two maximalist and incompatible options. Dodik rejects use of the Bonn Powers and any changes to RS law. The Bosniak are pressing for changes to state law that would provide all former displaced persons - Bosniaks, Serbs and, Croats -with the right to vote in their pre-war municipality, a proposal the Serbs reject. The HighRep will present options to the SBA on April 25. The Ambassador is scheduled to meet Dodik on April 28, just before Dodik travels to Srebrenica, and will use this meeting to press Dodik to do his utmost to head off a crisis by helping broker a mutually acceptable solution with his Bosniak counterparts. But if this effort fails, the international community may be confront having to decide whether to face: a) a crisis with the Serbs now (because the IC acts),b) a crisis with the Bosniaks later (because the IC fails to act),or c) a general crisis with both groups now (because the IC acts, but does "too little" to address the problem). ENGLISH