According to the partial results, the 46-year-old Becirovic, who was at the head of an alliance of eleven opposition parties, got 56 percent of the votes, Izetbegovic got 39 percent. Izetbegovic, son of the first post-independence Bosnian president, is the head of the SDA. In the past few decades, the party has played a key role in shaping politics in the country, which continues to be torn apart by ethnic conflicts.
Denis Becirovic casts his vote in Tuzla
Becirovic’s victory would mean that for the first time in 12 years no SDA politician would be represented in the state presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina. According to the partial results, the previous incumbent, the reformer Zeljko Komsic, is likely to have prevailed in the race for the Croatian seat. He is said to have accounted for 54 percent of the votes.
The Serbian seat, on the other hand, is likely to remain in the hands of nationalists. The candidate of the SNSD, which governs the Serbian part of the country, Zeljka Cvijanovic, is said to have won 53 percent of the votes. She is a confidant of Serbian separatist Milorad Dodik, who previously held the Serbian seat on the state presidency. This time he ran for the presidential post in the Serbian part of the country and is reportedly ahead.
Milorad Dodik, the leading Bosnian Serb politician, leaves the polling station in Laktasi
Complex voting system
The elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina took place against the background of growing ethnic conflicts. The vote was as complex as the country itself. At the level of the state institutions, the voters determined the state presidency, the federal parliament, the parliaments in the two largely independent parts of the country, the presidency in the Serbian Republic (RS) and the cantonal administrations in the Bosnian Croat Federation.
At the state level, the presidency consists of a Croat, a Bosniak Muslim and a Serb, who rotate in the presidency every eight months. The central government is responsible for the military, the judicial system, tax policy, foreign trade and diplomacy. The states have their own police, education and health systems.
The Long-Term Aftermath of Dayton
The complex and poorly functioning political system in the Balkan state emerged from the 1995 Dayton Agreement, which ended the civil war of the 1990s. Since 1995, the UN Security Council has appointed a High Representative to oversee the implementation of the peace agreement. The German Christian Schmidt currently holds the office. The envoy has formal powers to intervene in legislation and remove elected politicians. The office was originally scheduled to expire in 2007, but due to political instability and the failure of local politicians, the mandate was extended.
kle/wa/haz/hf (dpa, rtr, afp)
