SARAJEVO (Bosnia and Herzegovina), October 9 (SeeNews) – Bosnia is to hold general and presidential elections on Sunday as well as polls for cantonal assemblies, but it appears unlikely they will change Bosnia’s divided political landscape.
The parliamentary vote will be the country's seventh postwar election. Since the end of the 1992-95 war, Bosnia has been divided into two autonomous parts - the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic, and also has a neutral Brcko district.
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.
Sunday's election in the country of 3.8 million people will be supervised by more than 8,000 monitors, including 173 international observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
Here are some key facts about the poll:
* The three members of the Bosnian 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 wins 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.
* The Prime Minister of the central government is appointed by the presidency and confirmed by the central parliament's lower chamber, the House of Representatives.
* The 42 members of the central parliament's lower chamber (28 seats allocated from the Federation and 14 seats from the Serb Republic), the 98 members of the Muslim-Croat Federation parliament's lower chamber and the 83 members of the Serb Republic parliament are elected by proportional representation to serve four-year terms.
* The Cantonal Assemblies are unicameral and elected for four-year terms under a system of proportional representation.
* 3.2 million people aged 18 and over are eligible to vote in Bosnia.
* Polling stations will be open from 0700 (0500 GMT) to 1900 (1700 GMT).
* First official preliminary results will be announced at 2400 (2200 GMT).
* Sixty-five political parties, 24 coalitions and 24 independent candidates have been registered for the parallel parliamentary and presidential elections.
* There are 17 candidates for the Bosnian presidency.
* Five candidates will vie for the presidency of the Serb Republic, including incumbent president Milorad Dodik.
* In the previous election for central parliament, held in October 2010, Serb Republic's Union of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, won 43.3% of the vote in the Serb Republic, giving it eight seats in the central parliament. The Social Democratic Party, SDP, also won eight seats in the chamber. The Serb Democratic Party, SDS, won four seats, while the Party for Democratic Progress, PDP and Democratic People’s Union, DNS, had one seat each.
In the vote for the central parliament held in the Federation, Party for Democratic Action, SDA, won seven seats, followed by the Union for a Better Future of Bosnia and Herzegovina, SBB BiH, which had four seats. The most popular Croat party in the Federation, the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ-BiH, won three seats while Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina, S-BiH, had two seats. A coalition led by HDZ 1990, a splinter group that seceded from HDZ-BiH, also had two seats. The People's Party "By Labour towards Improvement" and the People’s Democratic Union, DNZ-BiH, had one seat each.
* Some 55% cast their votes at the previous election.
Bakir Izetbegovic from the Party for Democratic Action, SDA, Zeljka Cvijanovic from the Union of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, and Martin Raguz from HDZ 1990 won most support as Bosniak, Serbian and Croatian representatives for the presidency of BiH, respectively in the poll conducted recently by portal Klix.ba.