October 3 (SeeNews) - Candidates of Bosnian Serb nationalist party Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) and Christian Democrat, nationalist Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BIH) are in the lead for representation in the country's tripartite presidency after Sunday's election according to partial results, the central electoral commission said.
Zeljka Cvijanovic, candidate of SNSD, the party of current Serb member of the presidency Milorad Dodik, won 51.65% of the votes cast in the Serb Republic, the electoral commission said late on Sunday after ballots cast in 39.57% of the polling stations in the entity were counted.
In the other entity, the Federation, Borjana Kristo of HDZ BIH won 51.36% of the votes for the Croat member of the presidency. For the third, Bosniak member of the presidency, Denis Becirovic of opposition coalition United for Free Bosnia and Herzegovina, gained 55.78% of the votes.
The results for Becirovic and Kristo are based on 54.73% of all votes cast in the Federation.
Becirovic would replace as Bosniak member of the presidency Sefik Dzaferovic of Bosniak nationalist conservative Party of Democratic Action (SDA), whereas Kristo would come in the place of Zeljko Komsic of the Democratic Front (DF) as the Croat member of the presidency.
The three members of the Bosnian collective presidency (one Bosnian Muslim or Bosniak, one Serb, one Croat) are elected for a four-year term. Incumbents are eligible for a second term and become ineligible for the post for four years after the second term. The candidate who won most votes in Sunday's presidential elections will become chairman of the presidency unless he or she was the incumbent chairman at the time of the election. The chairmanship rotates every eight months.
Bosnia also held elections for parliaments on national, entity and cantonal levels on Sunday, but no results have been published by the electoral commission by the time of writing this article.
According to the US-brokered Dayton peace agreement that put an end to the war in Bosnia in the 1990s, the country is divided into two entities -- the Serb Republic (mostly populated by ethnic Serbs) and the Federation (majority populated by Bosniaks and Croats), covering 49% and 51% of the country's territory, respectively. The Brcko District, functioning under a decentralised system of local government, was created in 2000, out of land from both entities to reflect its multi-ethnic nature.
The Federation and the Serb Republic have their own governments and parliaments and are linked by a weak central government. The Federation is divided into 10 cantons with their own governments and parliaments. An international overseeing body holds the supreme authority in the country.