Thus, Bosnians are today choosing members of the House of Representatives of the state parliament and Houses of Representatives in the country's two entities -- the Bosniak-Croat federation and the Serb republic. A president and two vice presidents of the Bosnian Serb entity will also be elected. In the Croat-Bosniak entity, voters will elect deputies to assemblies in the federation's ten cantons.
A total of 779 activists from various nongovernmental organisations, plus 485 observers from international organisations, are monitoring the voting process.
As many as 37 political parties, 11 party coalitions and 13 independent candidates are running in the general election. A total of 8,242 candidates have registered for the race.
The State Election Commission will announce preliminary results at 11 pm Sunday.
The Social Democratic Party (SDP BiH) expects the biggest success at the voting. However, this nominally multiethnic party can count mostly on votes from Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) voters. SDP candidate Zeljko Komsic hopes that he will be re-elected as the Croat representative in the three-member presidency.
His rivals, Borjana Kristo of the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BiH) and Martin Raguz of the HDZ 1990 also believe in their victory and insist that, thus, they will be legitimate representatives of the Croat people in the state leadership.
The biggest surprise of the elections may be the Alliance for Better Future, the party established by media tycoon Fahrudin Radoncic, before the start of the campaign for the elections.
Radoncic is running in the race for the Bosniak representative in the presidency. His main rivals are Haris Silajdzic of the Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina (SBiH) who sits now in the presidency as the Bosniak representative and Bakir Izetbegovic, the son of the late Bosniak leader Alija Izetbegovic who founded the Party for Democratic Action (SDA).
The most popular Serb party seems to be the Party of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), led by the Serb entity's Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, who is this time competing for the post of the Serb entity's president.