Vote counting somewhere in a district
(photo: Dado Ruvić, Reuters/slobodnaevropa.org)
For those readers who are not that familiar yet with the - sometimes really confusing - internal affairs of Bosnia-Herzegovina: The current state of the country is based in the Dayton Peace Agreement from 1995. It divides the country into two so-called entities, the Bosnian Serb Republic (Republika Srpska, or RS) with Serbian majority and the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina with Bosnian and Croatian inhabitants. Additionally there is a region named Brčko that - theoretically - belongs to both entities (practically it is under the direct control of the High Representative of the international community*) and serves as a kind of corridor between the two entities. Both entities have their own assembly as well as a joint parliament and the three communities - Bosnians, Serbs and Croatians - delegate one candidate to the state presidency.
*the High Representative of the international community is a position where the person in charge is appointed by the European Union to supervise the observation of rules laid in the Dayton Peace Agreement and to keep up the often very fragile peace among the three communities
Let's make it clear. In a country that is this much divided along so very different interests, where a very small tension, a misunderstood word or even a wrong look at the wrong time and wrong place is enough to make the very thin, very fragile peace explode, it is very hard to keep elections, to say the least.
It wasn't different this time either. Beside the almost usual fraud and manipulations (e.g. using deceased people's ID's to boost votes). There were reports about the lack of legal basis to elect the House of People in the Federation (which is practically the upper house of the Federation's parliament). Nevertheless the election was held with no major incidents, the voters could choose among 58 political parties, 36 coalitions and 34 independent candidates running for 518 parliamentary seats and positions.
In Tuzla the candidates' list had the size of a bed-sheet. In Doboj long rows were waiting to be able to give their votes
Still the participation was only 53% though knowing how much the citizens in both entities grew tired of all the political frauds, lies and corruption, it's still a good result. As for the result of the election itself, well, we can say, there was not much surprise at all. In the Bosnian Serb Republic (RS) again the political mastodon Milorad Dodik (SNSD) won the seat to the state presidency with 55,15% of votes. In his speech Dodik just had to mock his opponent Mladen Ivanić saying "I got more than 70 000 votes more than him; I expect that for the final result the difference will be more than 80 000". He thanked the support to all their coalition partners saying "not even 100 American or British ambassadors could have helped us as much as they did". Dodik called the difference between him and Ivanić "unattainable, even if all those Muslims went for [Ivanić] who had the right to vote". He added that he doesn't care who will be the two other members of the presidency, he will work only in the interest of Serbs, making it clear that teamwork is not really on his agenda.
On this image Dodik was pictured still in the electoral district, but the grin on his face on this point is still tensed...
photo: Darko Vojinović, Tanjug/AP/N1
...but later, celebrating his own victory, he even burst out in singing.
If you have the heart to listen.
From 0:25.
In the other entity, the candidate of the Bosnian party SDA (Stranka Demokratske Akcije, Party of Democratic Action), Šefik Džaferović got most of the votes (37,97%).
SDA is one of the earliest political parties of the post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina, founded in 1990 by Alija Izetbegović, who was the current president, Bakir Izetbegović's late father. Izetbegović Sr. was the Bosnian member of the presidency between 1992 and 2000, while Izetbegović Jr. has been the member of Bosnia-Herzegovina's presidency since 2010. This time he is succeeded by Šefik Džaferović, but he still keeps the presidency of his party SDA, which - as you can see - has a great routine in possessing the place in the country's presidency.
Of course Džaferović just had to mock the opponents in his victory speech saying "we are a responsible party that won't just walk out to the media like that". After that he just thanked everyone who voted for him, and it would have been a relatively modest event if the enthusiastic party supporters hadn't made a celebration with fireworks that actually interrupted the speech of president Izetbegović (but I doubt he got offended).
Just some modest celebration. Nothing special.
If there was any surprise, that was served by the Croatian community, where the candidate of the left-winger, social-democrat party DF (Demokratski Front - Democratic Front) Željko Komšić has earned the most votes, 49,47%.
This presidency membership isn't new for Komšić either, he has served between 2006 and 2014.
The reason why it was still a surprise is that everybody expected the right-winger, populist HDZ's candidate Dragan Čović to win again. Čović served twice in the presidency, first between 2002 and 2005, then from 2014 until now and during this election he got a very strong tail-wind from the party's mother organization in Croatia (their president Andrej Plenković visited Bosnia-Herzegovina during the campaign supporting Čović, but it seems that even that wasn't enough).
Komšić was straightforward in his victory speech. "Whether you voted for me or not, I'm your president" he said along with the usual acknowledgements and verbal flowers and fripperies.
Željko Komšić photographed in the voting booth
photo: STR/AFP/N1
Needless to say, none of the opposition parties were willing to accept the results of the elections. All of them demanded the re-count of votes and of course, mocking and verbally insulting the others, may they be parties or communities. Dragan Čović, the now former Croatian presidency member said "we, Croatians proved that we are a constitutive nation and we can think pro-European... pity that our Bosnian friends didn't understand it." Fahrudin Radoničić, leader of the centre-right party SBB (Savez za Bolju Budućnost - Association for a Better Future) said the election results are "questionable". Mladen Ivanić, Milorad Dodik's great opponent, who - upon the reports - for a short while was leading ahead of Dodik said "everywhere, where there were instruments to control [the elections], we won. I don't see whom would it bother to re-count the votes, at least in 10% of the voting booths."
Needless to say, right now there's no chance for re-counting the votes. As for the entity assemblies, the state parliament as well as those in the cantons, there's still no official result. All that we know that in the state parliament the majority will be SDA and SNSD, in the Federational Assembly SDA got the majority, as for the cantons, HDZ and SDA are in the leading position.
(Perhaps it will be the topic of another blogpost.)
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