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The institutional crisis in Mostar paralyzes the mayoral election for one year

Since the last elections held in October 2008, Mostar's citizens have witnessed a constitutional crisis between the main political parties that has prevented the Party for Democratic Action (SDA) mayoral candidate, who won the election, being confirmed at the Consistory, due to restrictions of the elective system, a system that was approved by the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in 2004.

This lack of a government team has prevented the establishment of local policies and of the annual budget. Thus, since March 2009, municipal employees are not receiving their corresponding salaries, fact which has triggered several protests by workers of the municipal administration, supported by the Union of Trade Unions.

The current crisis is a clear reflection of the division in this city where the majority communities (Croat and Bosniak) are in continuous political struggle to defend their interests. This situation is exacerbated because Mostar is the only city in Bosnia and Herzegovina in which the elections are not decided by simple majority, but the allocation of votes clearly favors a minority, the Bosniac. This is due to the imposition made by the High Representative in 2004, a new statute which provided for an elective system which obliges the parties to reach agreements, because the mayor had to get two-thirds of the votes of the consistory to be elected.

This system worked until last year when the Bosnian and Croat major parties decided to break the original agreement. Due to the established system, if after two ballots in the Consistory one candidate does not achieve 2 / 3 of the votes, a third ballot is hold in which the winner will be the one to get a supermajority of 18 votes (half plus one of the 35 municipal representatives). In case of a tie, the youngest of the two candidates  would be appointed as mayor. Given the lack of support from both major parties to achieve the 2 / 3 of the votes for their candidate, there have been at least 16 votes to no avail.

In turn, the case of Mostar clearly shows a larger reality of coexistence between Croats and Bosniaks. After the Dayton peace treaty in 1995, the territory of BiH was divided into two entities: a Serb-majority entity controlled renamed as the Republika Srpska, and one controlled by the Croat and Bosniak majorities, called BiH Federation. The existence of these two entities (which then included the district of Brcko, a case apart) resulted in the denial of the Croatian community to get its own entity, going to share it with the Bosnians. As the capital, Sarajevo, is largely controlled by the Bosniaks, and the second largest city, Banja Luka, by the Serb community, the Croatian community feels it deserves to rule over Mostar.

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