Terzić: Voter will will no longer be so pronounced, as the order on the party list is important

Local elections will be held in Bosnia and Herzegovina on October 2nd. More than 3.2 million voters in the country and abroad will be able to choose from more than 30,000 candidates vying for the positions of councilors, aldermen, mayors, and city mayors, writes Patria.

The Central Election Commission of BiH previously announced that 103 political parties, 171 independent candidates, 52 representatives of national minorities on behalf of 52 groups of citizens and six national minority candidates on behalf of six associations, 106 coalitions, and 17 lists of independent candidates have registered to participate in the local elections.

Analysts warn that the Election Law in BiH is such that the voters' influence in elections is not that significant, meaning that parties still largely decide which candidate will enter office, while this decision is less left to the voters.

The problem is particularly pronounced after the amendments to the BiH Election Law, when the threshold for candidates to enter office was raised from five to ten percent of the required votes, out of the total number of votes won by the party.

Analyst Almir Terzić believes that citizens will find it increasingly difficult to directly send candidates into office, and that political parties will increasingly do it for them.

Simply put, for a party to enter local government or win mandates in councils and committees, it needs to win three percent of the votes in the elections from the total number of voters who turn out to vote in the local community. The more votes a party wins above this threshold, the more seats it will get in the councils or municipal committees.

How does a party distribute who will enter local government from its cadres?

First, those who have directly received enough votes from citizens enter. All candidates who receive ten percent of the total votes won by their party in the elections will directly enter local government.

The party fills the remaining seats in government according to the order on the ballot. Thus, the list holder enters first, then the second on the list, then the third, and so on, depending on how many mandates the party has won. Candidates from the top of the list enter the councils regardless of the number of votes they received directly.

Thus, it can happen that a candidate from the top of the list enters the council with 100 votes, while someone who is last on the list does not enter even with 500 votes, if those 500 votes do not constitute ten percent of the total number of votes won by the party.

- The local elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina have retained the system of semi-open candidate lists, which means that voters will still be able to vote for both the party and a candidate by name and surname on that list – journalist and analyst Almir Terzić explains to NAP, continuing:

- However, the amendments to the BiH Election Law stipulate that the election threshold for parties remains at 3 percent for the distribution of mandates, but the threshold for candidates on the party list is increased, and by double. Thus, for a candidate to get a councilor or alderman mandate, they will need 10 percent of personal votes within the party list instead of the previous 5 percent.

This, in effect, reduces the influence and the ability of voters to influence the election of people they want to see in municipal councils and assemblies. In this way, the voters' right to shape the composition of future local parliaments has been seriously abolished. So, if you are not among the first ten on the party list, it is difficult to hope that you will reach the top. Although (the authorities) have not closed the party lists, with this election law, it is as if they have done so – Terzić explains.

The hierarchy established by the party on the election lists is still respected.

- The will of the voters will be far less pronounced, so those who have had some chance to overtake the party order until now will find it almost impossible now. Therefore, they will need a large number of votes to directly enter local government, says Terzić, writes NAP.