Bosnians Vote In Delayed Local Elections

SARAJEVO — Bosnians are voting in local elections on November 15 that were delayed due to the country’s budget crisis.

Nearly 3.4 million voters are eligible to help choose town and municipal councils and mayors in the country’s two autonomous regions: the Bosniak-Croat Federation and Republica Srpska, and in the neutral Brsko District.

Polls opened at 7 a.m. and will close at 7 p.m. Preliminary results are expected by midnight.

Voters at polling stations had to observe strict physical distancing due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The elections were originally slated for October 4. But the government’s delay in adopting a national budget, including funding for the elections, led to the postponement.

The ethnically divided southern city of Mostar will hold elections separately on December 20.

Those long-delayed elections will be the first in Mostar in 12 years and come after Bosnia-Herzegovina’s main Bosniak and Croat parties in June reached a last-minute agreement on a new statute for the city.

Mostar has not held municipal polls since 2008 because of the authorities’ failure to enforce a 2010 ruling by Bosnia’s Constitutional Court that said the city’s power-sharing structure was unconstitutional and needed reform.