Sarajevo
\nBosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik and Sefik Dzaferovic, the candidate of the largest Muslim Bosniak party, have won the Serb and Bosniak seats in Bosnia\u2019s triumverate presidency, the election commission said early Monday.<\/p>\n
Moderate Croat Zeljko Komsic, who already served two terms in the presidency, won the Croat seat with 49.5 percent of the vote, winning over nationalist Dragan Covic from the largest Croat party, HDZ.<\/p>\n
Dodik secured 55 percent of the vote and Dzaferovic 38 percent, based on about 42 percent of counted ballots, election commission President Branko Petric said at a news conference.
\nThe ballot was a test for Bosnia to determine if it will progress towards European Union membership and NATO integration or remain held back by ethnic rivalries.<\/p>\n
More than two decades after a war in which 100,000 died, leading Serb, Croat and Muslim Bosniak parties campaigned on nationalist tickets, reviving wartime pledges while failing to offer any clear economic or political visions.<\/p>\n
About 1.7 million voters took part in the presidential and parliamentary elections, choosing members of Bosnia\u2019s tripartite inter-ethnic presidency, consisting of a Bosniak, a Croat and a Serb, and lawmakers for parliament\u2019s lower house.<\/p>\n
They also voted for leaders and assemblies of its two autonomous regions \u2014 the Serb Republic and the Bosniak-Croat Federation, and of the federation\u2019s 10 cantons.<\/p>\n
Dodik, a pro-Russian leader who has repeatedly advocated secession of the Serb Republic and integration with Serbia, earlier proclaimed victory in his party stronghold in the northern town of Banja Luka.<\/p>\n
Analysts believe that he will work to weaken the presidency.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy first priority will be the position of the Serb people and of the Republika Srspka,\u201d Dodik said, referring to Bosnia\u2019s autonomous region that he has presided over until now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that Bosnia-Herzegovina also may progress if everyone is respected,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Covic said he garnered the majority of Croat votes and that Komsic won only due to Bosniak votes. The HDZ had argued for the creation of new ethnically based election units in which Croats would vote only for their ethnic candidate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sarajevo Bosnian Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik and Sefik Dzaferovic, the candidate of the largest Muslim Bosniak party, have won the Serb and Bosniak seats in Bosnia\u2019s triumverate presidency, the election commission said early Monday. Moderate Croat Zeljko Komsic, who already served two terms in the presidency, won the Croat seat with 49.5 percent of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43933,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43934,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43932\/revisions\/43934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}