Darijana Filipovic of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ BiH) has won the Croat seat on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s state presidency. For eight years that seat belonged to Zeljko Komsic of the civic-oriented Democratic Front. The vote was held on Sunday 4 October, and analysts who spoke to Al Jazeera read the wider result as another step along ethnic lines.
A seat changes hands
Filipovic beat Slaven Kovacevic, the candidate Komsic preferred. Under Bosnia’s electoral system, Croat and Bosniak members of the presidency are chosen in the Federation, and every citizen can vote for any candidate whatever their nationality. Many Bosniaks backed Komsic over the past eight years, and HDZ leader Dragan Covic complained that Croats were being outvoted. After the result he publicly thanked Bosniaks.
The result leaves Bosniak Denis Becirovic of the Social Democratic Party, who won a second term, as the only presidency member with a declared multi-ethnic orientation. Alongside him and Filipovic sits Zeljka Cvijanovic, the candidate of Milorad Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD). The interests of the constituent peoples are likely to weigh far more than they have in recent years.
Dodik’s shadow over Republika Srpska
In Republika Srpska the SNSD again swept aside its rivals and won the largest number of votes in both the entity and state parliamentary elections. Dodik was barred from running because of a final conviction, yet the Society for Threatened Peoples said he dominated the campaign. “He was not on the ballot, yet politically, he was omnipresent,” said Belma Zulcic, who directs the group’s Bosnia section.
The group also pointed to what Dodik said after the first results. He claimed that without Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 US presidential election, his movement would likely be “politically dead”, and he cited support from Vladimir Putin. The Trump administration lifted sanctions on Dodik, his family and allies in October 2025. Zulcic warned that the EU and Germany should take seriously the possibility of US support for recognising an independent Republika Srpska.
Nationalism was not confined to Serb and Croat parties. In the Federation the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) made significant gains and led in votes, though the group stressed that Bosniak voters did not move uniformly.
What analysts expect
Sacir Filandra, a political science professor at the University of Sarajevo, tied the outcome to a European pattern. “In these times of crisis and transition, that trend has also reached us,” he said, describing voter choice as rooted in insecurity, anxiety and fear. He called the situation highly conservative, with politics reduced to a redistribution of power.
Historian and columnist Dragan Markovina expects a coalition of the SDA, SNSD and HDZ. “Much of post-war Bosnia’s history has been spent with these parties in coalitions, and nothing has improved,” he said. He added that part of the public sees the HDZ win as a chance to ease Croat-Bosniak tension. Turnout was about 40 percent, roughly 10 points lower than four years earlier. Coalition talks have yet to begin in earnest, and the clearer picture will come only once governments are formed.
Sources
- ‘Trend reached us’: Nationalists gain ground in Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina: STP Warns of Further Ethno-National Polarization • GfbV
