Bosnia-Hercegovina

Abstract

One can distinguish three phases in the difficult emergence of Bosnia- Hercegovina as a polity. The first phase started with the election of September 1990, when three main parties emerged, representing respectively the Bosniaks, the Serbs and the Croats. The Bosniak party, the Party for Democratic Action (PDA), was the largest and obtained 86 of the 240 seats of the Assembly; the Serb Democratic Party (SDP) was second with 72 seats; the Croat Democratic Union of Bosnia and Hercegovina (CDU-BH) was third with 44 seats. These three parties took also all the seats in what was still the ‘collective presidency’ of the country on the communist Yugoslav model. An agreement was struck among these three parties on the basis of which the Bosniak Alija Izetbegovic became president, the Croat Jure Pelivan prime minister and the Serb Momilo Krajisnik the speaker of the Assembly. However, less than one year later, in October 1991, the agreement was effectively ended, with the Serb speaker of the Assembly declaring the session closed.