In 2015, Bosnia and Herzegovina was governed by a coalition of three ethnically based parties. The largest of these was the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action (SDA), which was led by Bakir Izetbegovic. The Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) were the other two major parties in the coalition. These parties controlled the Presidency, Parliament, and most government ministries at both the national and sub-national levels.
The country was divided into two main entities, Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, each with its own government. This arrangement was meant to ensure that all ethnicities were represented in decision-making processes. However, it created a complex system that often resulted in gridlock and political infighting between different factions. See ehealthfacts for Bosnia and Herzegovina in the year of 2005.
Overall, 2015 saw a continuation of this fraught political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. While there were some attempts at reform, most notably with regards to strengthening economic ties with other countries in Europe, much remained unresolved due to deep divisions amongst the various ethnicities within the country.
Yearbook 2015
Bosnia and Herzegovina. The difficulties of forming government at national level and in the Bosnian-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina after the October 2014 elections continued. Only on the last of March, just hours before the time was up, was the formation of government finished. At national level, Denis Zvizdić of the Bosnian Nationalist SDA (Party of Democratic Action) became Prime Minister of a government in which also the Croatian Nationalist HDZ BiH (Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina with partners), as well as the Serbian parties SDS (Serbian Democratic Party) and PDP (Democratic Progress Party) and the relatively newly formed DF (Democratic Front). In the federation, the SDA, HDZ BiH and DF formed a coalition, but it exploded after just under three months when DF withdrew because of a conflict over control of state-owned companies.
On July 11, the 20th anniversary of the massacre of 8,000 Muslim boys and men was celebrated in Srebrenica in 1995. Prior to the ceremony, several thousand people, including survivors of the massacre, participated in a three-day and ten-mile long march along the path that thousands of Muslims fled. Bosnian Serb forces. A motion for a resolution was tabled in the UN Security Council to call the massacre genocide, but it was stopped by the Russian Federation who vetoed it.
On the anniversary itself, tens of thousands of people attended a memorial ceremony where remains of 136 newly identified death victims were buried. Among those present were Bill Clinton, who was the President of the United States at the time of the Dayton Agreement, which set the stage for the 1992-95 war. Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić, who was also present, had just put flowers at the memorial when people in the crowd started throwing bottles and stones at him, and he was forced to flee the site. A few weeks later, the three members of the Bosnian Presidency visited Belgrade, where, together with Vučić, they promised to work to improve relations between Bosnia and Serbia.
According to COUNTRYAAH, Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina which is located in Southern Europe. The fragile state-building that Bosnia and Herzegovina constituted continued to appear fragile. In April, the president of the Serbian Republic, Milorad Dodik, announced his intention to announce a referendum on independence for the region in 2018. A few months later, following a proposal by Dodik, a referendum on the national judiciary in the Serbian Republic was announced. Dodik argued that the judiciary was partial to the disadvantage of the Bosnian Serbs. The Constitutional Court and large sections of the international community considered that such a referendum was contrary to the Dayton Agreement and many saw it as a disguised vote on independence. The referendum was held in November, one week before the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Agreement.
- Also see AbbreviationFinder.org for Bosnia and Herzegovina country abbreviations, including geography, history, economy and politics.
The presidential elections took place on September 14, 1996: each national group elected its own representative in the collegial presidency and Izetbegović, who was the first among the Muslim candidates, obtained a higher number of votes even than the winner among the Croatian candidates and the winner among the Serbs, respectively K. Žubak (of the HDZ) and M. Krajišnik (of the SDS), thus assuming the office of President of the Presidency of the B. and Herzegovina. The elections for the House of Representatives (the Parliament of the Bosnia and Herzegovina) took place at the same time, which confirmed the preponderance, among the three national groups, of their respective nationalist parties. The contemporary elections for the presidency of the Serbian Republic saw the affirmation of B. Plavšić, of the SDS (the founder of the party and president of the Serbian Republic since 1992, R. Karadžić, was forced to resign because he was wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes, together with gen. Mladić), while Žubak remained at the presidency of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina The preponderance of nationalist parties was again confirmed by the administrative elections held in September 1997, after several postponements due to suspicion of manipulation of the electoral lists. On that occasion a relatively positive result was nevertheless achieved, in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by the Joint List (coalition of non-nationalist forces, mainly of social democratic inspiration), and in the Serbian Republic by the Social Democrats, furthermore favored by the conflict that emerged between Karadžić and Plavšić and the consequent rupture of the monolithism of the SDS. Born as a personal opposition in the management of power, this contrast acquired the characteristics of a political conflict (President Plavšić, initially an exponent of the most intransigent Serbian nationalism, gradually moved to more moderate positions) and risked leading to the split of the Serbian Republic, with the government, remained loyal to Karadžić installed in Pale, and the presidency in the city of Banja Luka. The mediation of Yugoslav President Milošević led to the calling of early parliamentary elections. Held in November 1997, the consultations saw the SDS, which remained an expression of the faithful of Karadžić, losing the absolute majority of votes and the Serbian People’s Alliance, constituted by Plavšić, winning 20 % of the votes. In January 1998, President Plavšić appointed Social Democratic leader M. Dodik as prime minister, who gained the support of all non-nationalist parties, including representatives of Muslims. From the end of 1997 also the leadership of the HDZ of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was deeply divided and the strong contrasts sharpened with the election to the presidency of the party (May 1998) by A. Jelavić, supporter of an uncompromising nationalism and the need to keep Herceg-Bosna alive. This was followed by the departure from the party of the more moderate component, led by Žubak, who in the following June gave birth to a new Christian-democratic formation, called New Croatian Initiative (Nova Hrvatska Inicijativa, NHI).