People in Bosnia and Herzegovina voted in elections on October 4, but even as the count went on, the politicians had stopped waiting.
Only three days after the election, the chairmen of the Party of Democratic Action, SDA, the Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina, SBiH, and the Democratic Front, DF, in Sarajevo Canton announced that they would form the cantonal government in the capital. Power was being assembled before the final results were even in.
Other leaders were assembling alliances on the road. On October 9, Dragan Covic, leader of the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ BiH, the main Bosnian Croat party, was in Mostar with Nermin Niksic, leader of the Social Democratic Party, SDP.
Covic then went on to Sarajevo, where Bakir Izetbegovic, leader of the SDA, received him. On Saturday, Izetbegovic welcomed Semir Efendic, leader of the SBiH, at SDA headquarters. On Monday, Covic was in Banja Luka, in Republika Srpska, sitting across from Milorad Dodik, leader of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, the main Bosnian Serb party.
Dodik is currently barred from holding public office because of a court conviction. Yet he emerged from the meeting as half of a partnership, already issuing joint conditions to everyone else. Thanks to the good election results their parties enjoyed, both Covic and Dodik are now key to making the government at any level.
It was a striking contrast with the dull election campaign. “This campaign is very anaemic,” Adnan Huskic, a professor at the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, told BIRN before the vote.