Some thoughts on the local elections in Bosnia

A pattern seems to be emerging in the Central Bosnia canton, one of the two “mixed” cantons in the Bosniak-Croat Federation that was established in 1994.


In the 2004 mayoral elections, Jajce, previously a Croat-controlled municipality having been captured from the Serbs by the HVO (Bosnian Croat Army) in the dying days of the Bosnian war, elected an SDA (Bosniak nationalist) mayor. In the 2008 mayoral elections, the SDA took Busovaca and Novi Travnik, previously part of a crescent-shaped sliver of Croat-dominated municipalities surrounded by Bosniak-majority territory.

Yesterday it was the turn of Vitez, which became the fourth previously Croat-controlled municipality in the canton to come under the control of the SDA, although an examination of the voting figures suggests one should not read too much into this particular result. The percentage of the electorate voting for Croat mayoral candidates in Vitez actually rose from 60% in 2008 to 62% in 2012, with the SDA profiting from a split in the Croat vote. The Croat vote also held up at 46% in Busovaca, which was a straight contest between the Croat nationalist HDZ and the victorious SDA, and in Jajce, the Croat vote rose to 46% from 44% in 2008.

But in Novi Travnik, which the SDA held, the Croat vote fell from 56% in 2008 (when the SDA benefited from a split in the Croat vote) to 38% in 2012, while in Kiseljak, which the HDZ won, it declined to 64% from 70%.  In Zepce, a Croat enclave in the Bosniak-dominated Zenica-Doboj canton, 55% of votes went to explicitly Croat parties, compared with 60% last time, although the left-wing SDP, which is seen by many Croats as a party representing Bosniak interests, fielded a Croat candidate rather than a Bosniak one, which may have swung some Croat voters.

The picture is complex, but the dramatic falls in the Croat nationalist vote as a percentage of the total in Novi Travnik, Kiseljak and Zepce point to a weakening of the Croat position in the Central Bosnia and Zenica-Doboj cantons, a trend that is symbolised by the SDA’s victory in Vitez yesterday.