BiH's Municipal Elections: Some Interesting Facts.

Municipal elections took place across Bosnia and
Herzegovina on Sunday October 7.
(Source: Klix.ba)

As I reported to you yesterday, citizens in 136 municipalities across BiH went to the polls yesterday for local council and mayoral elections.

Already, just one day later, some facts and figures have been released which have made for some very, uh.. well, interesting reading.

Thanks to state news agency Anadolu, here are some of yesterday's interesting occurrences:

• Only 53.37% (1.65 million) of registered voters in BiH took to the polling booths yesterday to cast their votes. The nation's Electoral Commission deemed this as 'satisfactory'.
• A mayoral candidate in the municipality of Odzak was disqualified after it was discovered he had placed 55 'fake' votes for himself in the ballot box.
• Elections in Srebrenica were temporarily halted on two occasions over the course of the day due to running out of voting slips.
• In the municipality of East Mostar, a candidate won to the position of mayor with just 96 votes; further intriguing, he only had one rival - whom trailed in the final count by just five votes.
• In Neum, a town on the BiH coastline, there was only one candidate running for mayor. Unsurprisingly, he received 100% of the vote.
• For the first time in the history of Bosnia-Herzegovina, a covered woman was elected to the role of mayor. Amra Babic won through to office in the area of Visoko; also making her the first hijab-wearing female to be the leader of a municipality in Europe.
• In the locality of Jezero, a candidate became mayor with less than 10 votes; while the person with the least amount of votes received just one. Another unsurprising fact; he voted for himself.
• In Travnik, 1,713 votes were deemed invalid out of the 44,320 which were counted.
• Out of the 1.5 million BiH citizens living overseas - and of which are permitted to vote in these elections - just 37,359 bothered to cast their vote.
• It is estimated that almost 9 million BAM ($5.85 million AUD) was spent on political advertising by the competing parties and mayoral candidates. As pointed out by Bosnian news portal Klix, this figure would more-than-likely be enough to fund the monthly pension to more than 30,000 people across BiH.
• With more than 190 active political parties, BiH holds the record for the highest number of parties in relation to its population. Statistically, there exists one political party for every 20,209 inhabitants in this country.

Politics is a fun game, huh ..?