SARAJEVO, (AFP) - Bosnians have begun voting in the third post-war local elections, which are expected to confirm the dominance of the ruling nationalist Croat, Muslim and Serb parties.
Some 2.3 million Bosnians are eligible to elect councillors in 142 municipalities, and 140 mayors. For the first time mayors will be elected directly in one round.
Polling stations opened at 7:00 am (0500 GMT) and were due to close at 7:00 pm (1700 GMT). First partial results were expected around midnight (2200 GMT).
Three powerful nationalist parties which led the bloody 1992-95 war -- the Muslim Party of Democratic Action (SDA), the Croat Democratic Union (HDZ), and the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) -- were seen as likely to win in a majority of municipalities dominated by their respective ethnic groups.
The elections are likely to have the lowest turnout yet due to widespread apathy among Bosnians burdened with a difficult economic situation. Surveys have shown that only 49 percent of Bosnia's electorate would vote.
Analysts say that a low turnout may benefit the three nationalist parties which have a stable voter base.
Queues of early voters in front of polling stations in the capital were missing this time.
"We had less voters in the first hour than in any previous elections," an official at one polling station in Sarajevo said.
"I voted in every election in the past, but this time I am not going to," Dzemila Mulic, a 46-year-old saleswomen said.
"I'm disapponted with the authorities at all levels, and I don't trust any party," she explained.
Despite international calls to vote for reform, the three nationalist parties, helped by a few minor allies, won general elections in 2002 and ended a brief rule of moderates.
In the last municipal elections, held in April 2000, nationalists won in most municipalities although multi-ethnic Social Democrats gained control in mainly Muslim cities, including the capital Sarajevo. Turnout was 66 pecent.
Nationalists seem to be more cooperative than in the early post-war period, launching a series of reforms aimed at strengthening central institutions at the expense of individual entities' autonomy.
Still, the international community has warned that the reforms process remains far too slow.
The nationalists' campaigns have focused on the still-winning card of fear among ethnic groups rather than on municipal issues.
Candidates for the mayor of northern Bosnian town of Samac include Simo Zaric, a Bosnian Serb sentenced to a six-year jail term by the UN war crimes court for having organized the ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats during the war.
With an unemployment rate of more than 40 percent, Bosnia's economy is still recovering from the brutal war and has been kept afloat by an influx of 5.1 billion dollars of international aid over the past nine years.
Post-war Bosnia consists of two semi-independent entities -- the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serbs' Republika Srpska.