Moderate Croat, Bosniak candidates lead in race for presidency seats

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SARAJEVO, Oct 2 (Reuters) –

Moderate Croat and Bosniak candidates Zeljko Komsic and Denis Becirevic are leading in the run-up for the seat on Bosnia’s tripartite inter-ethnic presidency, according to the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) preliminary results on Sunday.

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Bosnia’s voters turned out to choose the country’s new collective presidency and lawmakers at national, regional and local levels, in a contest between entrenched nationalists and economy-focused reformists.

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The first official results are expected at midnight (22:00 GMT), but SDA came out with its own results based on 80% votes counted.

Komsic, the leader of the Democratic Front (DF) party, seemed set to win the fourth term in the presidency beating a rival candidate from the Croat largest Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ) with 70.7% of the votes.

Becirevic, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) member who was backed by 11 opposition civic-oriented parties, won 56.5% of the votes over Bakir Izetbegovic, whose nationalist Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) SDA party has been in power since the end of the war. Izetbegovic late on Sunday conceded defeat.

“It seems to me that we can talk about change on the political scene of Bosnia and Herzegovina, though not a radical one,” Komsic said, declaring victory.

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Bosnia is going through its worst political crisis since the end of its war in the 1990s, prompted by the separatist policies of the Serb leadership and threats of blockades by Bosnian Croats.

Zeljka Cvijanovic, an ally of Bosnian Serb pro-Russian separatist leader Milorad Dodik, was seen as winning the Serb seat on the tripartite inter-ethnic presidency, according to her SNSD party preliminary results, based on a small sample.

The race for the job of Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic president between Dodik and opposition economy professor Jelena Trivic still seemed inconclusive.

Bosnia comprises two autonomous regions, the Serb-dominated Serb Republic and the Federation shared by Bosniaks, or Bosnian Muslims, and Croats, linked by a weak central government. The Federation is further split into 10 cantons. There is also the neutral Brcko district in the north.

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Komsic’s victory was harshly criticized by Croat political parties, which complain that majority Bosniaks elect their presidency member. They have threatened to bloc the formation of a regional government if Komsic wins.

But just an hour after polls closed, the international peace overseer for Bosnia imposed changes to the election law, imposing unblocking mechanisms and strict deadlines to safeguard the functioning of the Federation.

The election commission said that turnout by 7 p.m. (1700 GMT) was 50%. The commission will announce first preliminary results of the vote around midnight (2200 GMT).

(Additional reporting by Reuters TV and Ivana Sekularac; Editing by Jan Harvey, Alexander Smith and Nick Macfie; editing by Diane Craft)