The president of the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BiH), Dragan Covic, has appealed to the candidate of another Bosnian Croat party, HDZ 1990, Martin Raguz, to pull out of the race for the Croat member of the country's collective presidency so that the HDZ BiH candidate Borjana Kristo could defeat the Social Democratic Party candidate Zeljko Komsic, the HDZ BiH said in a statement on Tuesday.
Covic made the appeal at an election rally of his party in Posusje on Monday, offering Raguz a ministerial post if he withdrew.
"We must not allow the Bosniak representative Zeljko Komsic to decide on behalf of the Croat people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. (...) The 15,000 votes or so he would win mean nothing to him because he cannot win anyway, and those votes would mean a lot to our candidate, Borjana Kristo. If necessary, we will secure him a place in the Council of Ministers so that Bosniaks would no longer take decisions relevant for the future of the Croat people in Bosnia and Herzegovina," Covic said.
Raguz's election team declined to comment on Covic's offer. They said on Tuesday that Raguz was confident that the Croat representative in the state presidency would be chosen between Komsic and him.
A survey carried out by the US National Democratic Institute in August on a sample of 2,000 people showed that as many as 40 per cent of the voters who had already decided whom they would vote for would support Komsic. Kristo would receive 3.9 per cent of votes and Raguz 2.8 per cent.
The Bosnian Croat parties insist that Komsic has been nominated thanks to the support of Bosniak voters.
