The deadline for submitting candidate lists for the General Election, which will be held on October 4, has expired. It is already certain that citizens will have a wide choice of candidates for all levels of government – from the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Parliament of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, through the National Assembly of the RS, to the assemblies of ten cantons.
Although the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina has the least executive powers compared to other levels of government, the race for the collective head of state traditionally attracts the most public attention.
The fight for the position of the collective head of state, that is, the members of the BiH Presidency, has begun in earnest. While the citizens of the RS elect one candidate for the Presidency from among the Serbian people, in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina the citizens elect a Bosniak and a Croat representative. The names are already known, and there are seven candidates. Two have already held this position, Denis Bećirović and Bakir Izetbegović.
In addition to Bećirović and Izetbegović, Darijana Filipović, Semir Efendić, Fahrudin Radončić, Slaven Kovačević and Zdenko Lučić are competing for the presidential mandate.
“I can proudly say that we have close to 500 candidates throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, from all cantonal, entity and state levels. Also, our candidate for the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Bosniak people, Denis Bećirović, has the support of 13 other parties in addition to the SDP BiH,” said Adnan Šteta, vice president of the Cantonal Committee of the SDP Sarajevo.
“What is most important to us is that we have offered lists in Republika Srpska as well. Narod i Pravda (NiP) will support the joint candidate of 14 parties, Denis Bećirović, as a member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. We want to continue the continuity of state policies and the strengthening of state institutions,” said political director of NiP Adnan Delić.
“There are more than 400 candidates on our lists. We have submitted 34 candidate lists for different levels of government, from cantonal assemblies to the PSBiH, as well as a candidacy for a member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is already known to the public,” said HDZBiH Vice President Darijana Filipović.
And the Democratic Front has a candidate for the Presidency member from among the Croatian people – a position that has been breaking political spears for years, and which went to Željko Komšić twice for two consecutive mandates.
“We are going to the elections with close to 400 candidates. We talked with representatives of the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina about election technologies and we are very interested in their application. We want to finally send a message that voters decide on elections, not counters, which is what we had in earlier election processes,” said DF General Secretary Dženan Đonlagić.
In addition to the fight for one of the most important institutions, the expectations of the opposition parties from the Federation are high, which is why joint efforts have been launched to attack all constituencies.
“The coalition for the state gathers six pro-Bosnian parties – SDA, SBB, SDPBiH, NES, PDA and Greens. We submitted lists for all nine electoral units for the NSRS under the name ‘Coalition for the state’, as well as three lists for the PSBiH, which were registered on the SDA list because we cannot be a coalition in one entity and not be in the other. When it comes to the vice presidents of the RS, as far as I know, the SDA and the SDPBiH have separate candidates, the SDA from the Bosniak of the people, the Croatian SDP,” said SDA vice-president Edin Ramić.
“We submitted candidacies for the vice-president of the RS, for PSBiH, for all federal constituencies and seven constituencies for cantonal assemblies. We did a good job and we are satisfied with what we have completed today,” said HDZ 1990 president Ilija Cvitanović.
The creation of electoral lists and the distribution of personnel was approached strategically, said the representatives of Our Party and SBB.
“On the lists of our party, we have a record number of young people, women who are proven fighters against criminals, people from the diaspora, but also experienced politicians from the executive and legislative branches,” stated the president of our party, Sabina Ćudić.
“We expect a good result and the return of SBB. Our goal is to achieve the result we had in Brčko District of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where we were the second political party, and we believe that we can repeat that,” said SBB vice-president Nermin Đindić.
There are 89 days left until this year’s General Election. It is up to citizens to exercise their right to vote, go to the polls and vote, BHRT writes.
