VIENNA, Austria -- A nation still reeling from ethnic warfare threatens to re-ignite at the ballot box. A president accused of making time stand still struggles to cling to power. A rebel candidate is targeted with bombs and a warrant for his arrest as a terrorist.

Watched anxiously by Western governments deeply enmeshed in nation-building, the volatile Balkans are careering into a no-holds-barred election season 13 years after the collapse of communism.

Yet as leaders and their egos clash from Sarajevo to Skopje, they're running into a bad case of the ballot box blues.

Boycotts and low turnout are expected from a hostile electorate frustrated with politics as usual. Expectations of change have plummeted. Disillusionment and apathy abound over politicians perceived as corrupt and out of touch.

"I don't expect anything," said Lutvija Faketa, 69, a Muslim retiree in Bosnia.

The war-scarred country, which remains deeply divided along ethnic lines and stitched together by Western help, is gearing up for Oct. 5 general elections -- the first locally administered vote since the guns and tanks fell silent in 1995.

"Since the war ended, things only got worse," she said. "Only God can help us now."

Faketa's despair echoes in tiny but troubled Macedonia, where voting in parliamentary elections begins Sunday.

Last year, the country convulsed in six months of warfare between government security forces and ethnic Albanian rebels fighting for greater rights for their minority. Despite Western calls for restraint, shootings and bombings have rocked the run-up to the election.

Ethnic Albanians led by former rebel leader Ali Ahmeti, now a popular politician, hope to boost their presence in the 120-seat parliament from 24 seats to 28. But Macedonia's ruling party considers Ahmeti a terrorist, and authorities have issued a warrant for his arrest, raising the specter of more violence.

"Fair elections will not exist because everyone wants to eat each other," said Alija Osmani, 71, shopping at a Macedonian market. "There will be some kind of conflict. There will not be peace."

Guns do not figure into the elections in Serbia, which picks a new president Sept. 29, but there is plenty of intrigue as Slobodan Milosevic's successor jockeys for power in a new post in Yugoslavia's dominant republic.

Vojislav Kostunica, a moderate nationalist, has been Yugoslavia's federal president ever since Milosevic was ousted in October 2000.

Hope were high that Kostunica would lead the country out of years of Milosevic-era ruin. Instead, he has been preoccupied with a long-running feud with his arch-nemesis, Serbian Prime Minister Goran Djindjic.

Opponents say he is presiding over a nation frozen in time and is not doing what is needed to get it into shape politically and economically for membership in the rich and peaceful European Union.

There is at least one thing Kostunica has in common with ordinary Serbs: He needs a job.

An EU-brokered plan to keep intact what is left of Yugoslavia -- Serbia and much-smaller Montenegro -- would rename the country Serbia and Montenegro and abolish the federal presidency held by Kostunica.

Polls show that 30 percent of Serbs have not even decided whether to vote, and the nearly 2 million ethnic Albanians who live in the Serbian province of Kosovo are certain to boycott the election.

"I won't vote. Who is there to vote for?" said Marija Spasic, 22, a Serb university student who sees a bleak future "of bickering in the country and no progress toward Europe."

A dispute over electoral laws has prompted Montenegrins, who are bitterly split over whether or not to break away from Serbia, to delay elections there until Oct. 21. The outcome could complicate the delicate effort to forge a constitutional blueprint for Serbia and Montenegro.

In Kosovo, the unresolved flashpoint of the Balkans, all 10,000 local and international police officers will be on standby for Oct. 26 municipal elections, said U.N. police spokesman Barry Fletcher.

The elections themselves are rather routine, but tensions remain high between minority Serbs and independence-minded ethnic Albanians who were the targets of the tanks and troops sent by Milosevic in 1998-1999.

"Every time after elections, I say to myself that I will never vote again," said Gjevat Isufi, 56, a professor in Kosovo's provincial capital, Pristina. "The only thing I ask our government and internationals is to try and give us a normal life."

Back in Bosnia, where you can cut the pessimism with a chain saw, many say they will sit out the election because Western administrators will continue running their day-to-day affairs regardless of the outcome. But retiree Novo Trifunovic says he will buck the trend.

"I will vote," he said. "Every citizen has to vote. That's the only way to improve life."

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EDITOR'S NOTE -- AP Vienna bureau chief William J. Kole covers the Balkans. AP writers Aida Cerkez-Robinson in Bosnia, Dusan Stojanovic in Yugoslavia and Elida Ramadani in Kosovo contributed to this report.