ELECTORAL TURNOUT OF BH VOTERS IN CROATIA IS 77%

ZAGREB, Sept 2 (Hina) - Voting posts for Bosnian citizens in Croatia were closed at 7 p.m. on Sunday. The electoral turnout was 90,937 persons, i.e. 77 per cent of registered voters, leader of the National Coordination Committee Damir Zoric said on Sunday evening. After 7 p.m., voting continued in Slavonski Brod and Zagreb, but this should not alter significantly the whole percentage of the electoral turnout, which Zoric evaluated as within the boundaries of the expected. There were no major difficulties during elections, apart from the already mentioned problems concerning the shortage of ballots or the availability of ballots for voting in the area controlled by the Serbs. The elections were supervised by 30 representatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and 230 international monitors, and were followed by 194 reporters, including 53 foreign ones. OSCE representative for the elections of Bosnian refugees in Croatia Thobies Wernle said that, according to what he saw on the ground and the information he received from his collaborators, the elections were technically correct. Problems included the requests of a large number of people wishing to register subsequently, which was not possible, Wernle said. Speaking on the problems of refugees from Ravno, who would vote again, Wernle said that it was a technical mistake by OSCE to which there was no solution at the moment, but added that elections for "the Trebinje-Ravno municipality would be repeated". The majority of complaints that reached OSCE's office in Zagreb were from voters whose municipalities were in the Serb entity, Wernle said, adding that they complained that their political representatives were not listed on ballots. The majority of these were from Bosanska Posavina (northern Bosnia). "They were shocked! Yesterday they didn't understand what had happened, but today they kept calling, expressing their chagrin at that decision. They asked who had brought such a decision. What it meant. I told them I understood their chagrin but that we couldn't influence it. It was all certain people's spontaneous reactions", Wernle said. He added that OSCE would start gathering election material on Monday, and then send it to Sarajevo, where it would be divided according to municipalities, cantons, the ethnic and state level, and finally, after 14 September, would be added to election material from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Wernle concluded. (hina) ha jn 021056 MET sep 96