Bosnia votes as pro-Russian politician looms large over the race and ethnic tensions simmer

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Polls opened Sunday morning in Bosnia for a general election in which most citizens of the multi-ethnic Balkan nation are focused on everyday problems, while some mainstream politicians are whipping up war-era tensions that have kept the country divided since its brutal 1992-95 conflict .

Around 3.4 million voters in Bosnia are choosing the three members of the country's multi-ethnic presidency, lawmakers for the national Parliament, and heads of institutions for the country's two entities: the Muslim-majority Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Republika Srpska, which is dominated by ethnic Serbs.

Bosnia has a complex web of governing institutions that were created by a U.S.-brokered peace agreement in 1995 in an effort to manage the ethnic divisions between Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats that gave rise to the war.

On Sunday morning, Associated Press journalists reported seeing multiple polling places where voting could not begin on time due to difficulties with new digital voting technology, a measure introduced to address earlier concerns over vote tampering.

Taking center stage in the contest is a staunchly pro-Russian politician who, despite not appearing on the ballot, has dominated the campaign and inflamed divisions that have sparked fears of renewed instability.

Milorad Dodik , the separatist and nationalist former president of the Serb-majority Republika Srpska, has been banned from holding public office after being convicted of defying decisions by the international envoy overseeing the 1995 peace agreement.

Just back from a trip to Moscow where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Dodik's party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, is likely to win the election in Republika Srpska.

At his party's final election rally Friday night in Banja Luka, Republika Srpska's administrative capital, Dodik told supporters that Bosnia “is dead."

"It is an impossible country. It doesn’t make any sense,” Dodik said at the rally, which was also attended by the Russian ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Igor Khalabukov.

Dragan Bursac, an analyst, said despite Dodik not appearing on the ballot for the first time in nearly 30 years, he “is still in command. He is everywhere.”

“He is all over the media, not only in the entity of Republika Srpska, but in all of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is obvious that these measures to ban him from political life are not working, and he is using them,” Bursac said.

While Bosnia has been peaceful in recent years, its politicians have kept alive the divisions between the country's Bosniaks, who are mainly Muslim, and its Serbs and Croats. Bosnian Serb leaders like Dodik have pushed for the separation of their entity from the rest of Bosnia, which has led to concerns among Western countries that tensions could once again spill over.

One of the poorest countries in Europe, Bosnia is still struggling to recover decades after the war that started in 1992 after Bosnia declared independence from the Serb-led former Yugoslavia and ethnic Serbs took up arms to carve out their own state and join Serbia.

The conflict killed more than 100,000 people and displaced millions.

Bosnia is formally seeking to join the European Union , but progress toward membership has been stalled despite EU efforts to encourage Bosnia's divided leaders to work together for reform.

Ahead of Election Day, Durak Miler, a resident of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, said governing politicians “just poison people when they talk.”

“We should change the old faces,” he said. “They have been governing for 35 years ... I think whoever comes next will work better for retired people and the poor.”

The country's wartime wounds were recently revived by a public homage in Serbia and among Bosnian Serbs to the wartime army commander Ratko Mladic , who died in late August while serving a life sentence for genocide and other war crimes.

Bosnian Serbs view Mladic as a hero despite his conviction by a U.N. court over the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, and other atrocities.

Key Bosnian Serb officials attended the funeral service for Mladic in Belgrade that sparked harsh EU criticism and angered Bosniak politicians.

Authorities are for the first time using electronic identification of voters and scanning of ballots to prevent irregularities or organized voter manipulation, which have cast doubt on the fairness of previous elections.

Salko Bijavica, from the southern town of Mostar, said he is glad that “every vote will be counted,” and that the change will give “hope to people that elections will be fair.”

Most of Bosnia's 75 political parties running in the election are organized along ethnic lines in the country's Serb-controlled Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The two entities are bound together by the central presidency and Parliament.

The Bosniak nationalist Party of Democratic Action has focused its campaign on efforts to keep Bosnia united against Serb separatism. Bosnian Croats, too, largely support their ethnic parties, including the Bosnian branch of Croatia's ruling conservative Croatian Democratic Union.

Polls will close at 7 p.m. local time.

Many disillusioned citizens say politicians are using nationalism to avoid solving important problems such as poor living standards and an exodus of youth from the country.

Ivan Silic, from the southern town of Mostar, said: “I don’t see that anything is getting better, from the moment I started to vote.”

“We all know who lives well,” he said. "It is better for (politicians), and for the rest of us everything is the same.”