SARAJEVO, Oct. 4 (Xinhua) — Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) will hold its general elections on Sunday, electing its tripartite members of the presidency, state and entity-level assemblies.
The country’s Central Election Commission (CIK) has registered 128 political subjects, 58 parties, 36 coalitions and 34 independent candidates for the general elections, and a total of 7,497 candidates running for 518 positions for all levels of government.
CIK president Irena Hadziabdic said 3.38 million BiH citizens are eligible to vote.
Some 5,500 polling stations across the country will be open, and the election process will be monitored by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). Following an invitation from the BiH authorities and under the OSCE’s auspices, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) will observe the election process before, during, and after election day.
The mission will assess whether the process is transparent and conducted in line with OSCE commitments of honesty, partiality, and secrecy and whether the results are announced honestly and in a transparent matter.
The election campaign for general elections officially started on Sept. 7 and will last until 7 a.m., Oct. 6, when the election silence will begin.
Under one of the most complex electoral systems in the world, BiH voters will elect tripartite members of the presidency, which represents the three major ethnic groups of Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats. They will also choose a president and two vice presidents of Republika Srpska (RS), one of BiH’s entities, and its Assembly members. In addition, voters will choose members of the BiH Parliamentary Assembly, Federation of BiH (FBiH) Parliament, and assemblies of ten cantons in FBiH.
