General elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina will be held on October 4 this year, and the candidates running for the two positions in the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, elected from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, are more or less already known.
For the member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Bosniak people, the following candidates are entering the race: the current member Denis Bećirović, Bakir Izetbegović from the Alliance of Democratic Action (SDA), Semir Efendić from the Party for BiH, who is also the Mayor of Novi Grad Municipality, and Šuhret Fazlić, a former mayor of Bihać.
The other position elected from the territory of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina – the member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Croat people – will go to one of three candidates: Darijana Filipović from the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), Slaven Kovačević as an independent candidate supported by the Democratic Front (DF), or Zdenko Lučić, backed by the “Five” (Petorka), which includes five parties: HDZ 1990, Croatian Republican Party (HRS), Croatian National Shift (HNP), Croatian Democratic Alliance (HDS), and Croatian Peasant Party (HSS).
Another Race between Izetbegović and Bećirović, Efendić as the “Unknown” in the Equation
The two candidates who received the most votes four years ago are once again competing for the position of Bosniak member of the Presidency.
Bećirović received 330,238 votes in the 2022 General Elections and is now nearing the end of his term. In contrast, Izetbegović received 214,412 votes and did not return to the Presidency, where he served from 2010 to 2018.
Mirsad Hažikadić also ran for this position four years ago, receiving 30,968 votes. He will certainly not be a candidate this time.
Efendić, however, has not previously participated in elections at the state level. In the last elections, the party he leads supported Željko Komšić (DF), a candidate from the Croat community.
Looking at the parties the candidates represent, it is clear that the SDA, as a single party, achieved the best result four years ago, Klix.ba writes.
In the elections for the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, also held across the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the SDA received 243,415 votes in 2022. Comparing this to Denis Bećirović’s vote count, it is evident that fewer than 30,000 people voted for the SDA but not for its president.
Bećirović, formally from the Social Democratic Party (SDP), had support from 11 parties in the previous elections. That number has now increased to 14. Four years ago, his party received 129,500 votes in the elections for the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
However, support from other parties (NiP, Naša Stranka, NES, ZNG, BPS, PDA, POMAK, SBB, BHI-KF, and SPU) significantly contributed to his victory. These parties won a total of 232,881 votes, which, combined with the SDP’s result, meant that parties supporting Bećirović received 362,381 votes—32,000 more than those who voted for the joint candidate.
The Party for BiH, which will now have its own main candidate, received 26,480 votes in the elections for the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, without a candidate for the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Šuhret Fazlić has never run as a candidate at the state level, nor has his POMAK party ever had a candidate for the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Race for the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina without Komšić
Regarding the race for the second member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina elected from the territory of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, this year’s candidate will not be Željko Komšić, the winner of the previous election.
He won 227,540 votes in the previous elections, while his party, DF, received 101,715 votes at the state level. This indicates that Željko Komšić received a significant number of votes from voters who supported other parties at the state level.
Borjana Krišto, his opponent, won 180,255 votes, while her party, HDZ, received 137,340 votes for the House of Representatives of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Therefore, it should be noted that Krišto and Komšić were the only candidates from the Croat community, while this year, opposition parties with a Croat orientation will have their own candidate.
This year’s HDZ candidate is Darijana Filipović, who has not previously run in elections for the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. As a candidate for the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2022, she received 24,653 votes.
Slaven Kovačević, a formally independent candidate supported by DF, has also not run in elections at the state level or at the level of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was previously a municipal and city councilor in Sarajevo.
Zdenko Lučić, the candidate from “Five,” has not previously run in elections. The parties that supported him in the 2022 General Elections for the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina received 36,477 votes.
It should be taken into consideration that some parties supporting Lučić in the previous elections were in a pre-election coalition with HDZ, and that HNP received 5,351 votes at the level of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, meaning for the House of Representatives of the Federal Parliament.
Adnan Huskić: SDA Missed Its Chance
Although the numbers from 2022 provide a good basis, the situation has changed significantly over the past four years. Therefore, the following candidates – Efendić, Kovačević, and Lučić – are “unknowns” regarding their electoral potential and the number of votes they could receive.
Additionally, higher or lower turnout can significantly affect the outcome, and votes for the parties, as suggested by the 2022 figures for Izetbegović and Bećirović, do not necessarily have to be assigned to candidates from those parties or groups.
Adnan Huskić, a political analyst, commented in an interview with Klix.ba on the upcoming elections for the members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, elected from the territory of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
At the beginning, he stated that the two key candidates for the member from the Bosniak people are Bećirović and Izetbegović.
“I think that, at least in recent years, Bećirović has done work that was visible to most citizens. He was also present in the media. In this way, I believe he managed to dispel doubts even among people who were skeptical because of his party affiliation, as an SDP member, especially among voters who traditionally leaned toward the SDA or parties on the other side of the political spectrum,” Huskić said.
He further commented on Izetbegović’s candidacy in light of the previous term when the SDA served in opposition.
“Izetbegović’s issue is that during the period out of office at the state and entity levels, the party apparently did not use the opportunity to reform from within. This is evident in the results achieved by some SDA candidates in the local elections two years ago, where mainly young candidates were involved. Therefore, I think that, unfortunately, the SDA missed the opportunity this year, while out of office at the state level, to put forward a candidate who would represent something new – a new face for the SDA,” said this political analyst.
He added that Izetbegović was a logical candidate as the party president and that the SDA failed to present another candidate to the public in a short time.
“Even if we are talking about automatic voting on the principle of ‘I am voting for SDA, so I am automatically voting for their candidate,’ we saw in the previous elections that Izetbegović was more of a burden to the SDA than a form of leverage. I think the SDA made a big mistake there,” he added.
However, Huskić said it is still too early to discuss the results because the pre-election campaign has yet to begin.
“One should not forget the people, that is, the institutions that help in every case, especially religious institutions, which in some way influence the mobilization of their electorate toward one side or the other. But I think that here, especially if we compare it with the 2022 elections, a great opportunity was missed for the SDA,” he said.
Regarding other candidates, specifically Efendić, he points out that they are not serious in their intentions to run and that they have their own calculations, which will become clear during the campaign.
Also, speaking about the candidacy of the SBiH president, he says it is difficult to find his niche of voters outside the SDA.
“There are certain hostilities among the cadres, as well as people who are disappointed, so they then decide on Efendić. I can perhaps understand that. However, I do not think that Efendić has shown a way to position himself, at least regarding certain conceptual policies, either toward one side or the other, so that he could count on a broader electorate. I think it is simply a very specific niche that exists around him. I believe this candidacy is more tactical than strategic, but, as I said, let us wait and see how the situation develops and in which direction it will go,” Huskić said.
Regarding the Member of the Presidency from the Rank of Croat People
Huskić also commented on the candidacies for the member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the rank of Croat people, again emphasizing that there are two serious candidacies. He specifically pointed out that there will certainly be a difference between the numbers of voters for Komšić in 2022 and for Kovačević this year.
“This is simply not a straightforward mathematical operation. In that sense, I believe he has a significant shortcoming and will not be able to count on all those votes. Especially, it seems to me, if the campaign for Izetbegović is conducted seriously. That is, if there is indeed a serious attempt for the SDA candidate to return to the Presidency, with the support of various structures and institutions that often assist in such campaigns,” Huskić said.
Regarding Lučić’s candidacy, he called it a compromise and emphasized that the HDZ had failed to unite the parties with a Croat prefix behind its candidate.
“First of all, I do not consider the candidate of the Five (Petorka) within the Croat corpus to be a serious candidate in any way. It seems to me that this is a compromise candidate and an attempt to attract certain votes to the right of the HDZ, considering who Lučić is and what his political biography looks like. On the other hand, we have the HDZ, which failed to mobilize the other parties gathered around what is usually called the HNS to support the HDZ candidate,” Adnan Huskić told Klix.ba.
