BiH holds general elections

Chairman of Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Bakir Izetbegovic (L) prepares to cast his ballot at a polling station in Sarajevo, BiH, on Oct. 7, 2018. [Photo/Xinhua]

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) held general elections on Sunday to elect its tripartite members of the presidency, state and entity-level assemblies.

At a press conference, the country's Central Election Commission (CIK) revealed that until 11 a.m. local time, the turnout stood at 11.41 percent, similar to the 2014 general elections.

More than 3.38 million BiH voters are expected to cast their ballots during the day to elect a new presidency and parliament. Voting results are expected to come out late Sunday night.

Voting began at 7 a.m. on Sunday at 5,794 polling stations across the country, and will end at 7 p.m. the same day.

Fifty-eight political parties, 36 coalitions and 34 independent candidates are running in the elections with a total of 7,497 candidates running for 518 positions for all levels of government.

Head of the Coalition for Fair Elections "Under the Magnifier", Dario Jovanovic, said that there were 99 critical situations so far. Of them, 49 were related to the removal of observers from polling stations due to the lack of communication between different levels of electoral administration.

The rest were related to incidental violations of the electoral process in polling stations, mainly inappropriate speech.

"Thirty eight cases were successfully resolved in cooperation with local election commissions," Jovanovic said at a press conference.

In the 2014 general elections, there were 50 political parties, 24 coalitions and 24 independent candidates.

In 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 Bosnians, 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.