Usame Zukorlic Takes SPP Into October 25 Election Alone

The Presidency of the Party of Justice and Reconciliation (SPP) met in an extraordinary session, called after the snap parliamentary election was officially announced, and decided the party will go before voters entirely on its own. The election is set for October 25, and SPP’s Presidency announced the decision late Wednesday evening.

The list will run under the name “Usame Zukorlic (SPP) Movement for Unification.” It is headed by Usame Zukorlic, who has led SPP since 2021, when he took over the party after the death of his father, Muamer Zukorlic. The same session also set up the party’s Central Election Headquarters, which will run the campaign through election day.

In its statement, the Presidency said SPP enters the race

with a clear political identity and a program built around gathering and uniting Bosniaks

The party named its priorities in the same statement as

continuing capital projects, protecting the rights of Bosniaks, developing Sandzak and strengthening political unity

The names on the list, a detailed program and the campaign’s start date will be announced later, the party said.

The decision followed SPP’s Election Congress, where the party adopted a Declaration on the Unification of Bosniaks and laid out its direction for the period ahead. That congress, it now appears, set the stage for going it alone, since up to that point SPP had still been weighing a joint list with the other Bosniak parties.

An attempt that went nowhere

The solo run follows a failed attempt to bring Sandzak’s parties together behind a single list. On September 9, at 2 p.m., Zukorlic had called the leaders of the other Bosniak parties to a meeting to form a Forum of Bosniak Political Representatives of Sandzak. Sulejman Ugljanin, president of SDA Sandzak, and Samir Lekic, president of SDP, did not attend, which effectively sank the unification effort before it began. We covered this in “Zukorlic Without Ugljanin and Lekic, as Joint Bosniak List Falls Through.”

Wednesday night’s decision by the Presidency is, in that sense, simply the next step in the same sequence. With no joint list assembled, SPP did not wait for further talks and instead formalized its own candidacy, complete with a finished list name and an election headquarters already in place.

Zukorlic in government and in past elections

Alongside leading the party, Usame Zukorlic serves as a minister without portfolio in Djuro Macut’s government, responsible for reconciliation, regional cooperation and social stability. In the December 2023 parliamentary election, he topped the list “Usame Zukorlic, United for Justice, Party of Justice and Reconciliation, Bosniaks of Sandzak, Tomislav Zigmanov, Democratic Alliance of Croats in Vojvodina.” The current decision to run alone breaks with that coalition pattern, with the party going into this election without partners outside its own ranks.

While most parties need ten thousand certified voter signatures to register for the election, a minority list such as SPP’s needs only five thousand, since the Bosniak list is registered as a national minority list. It is one of the few formal advantages the law grants to national minority parties, and SPP has used that provision in past elections as well.

News of the Presidency’s decision was first reported Wednesday evening, at 11:03 p.m., by N1, and the party later confirmed the statement to other media outlets.

What comes next

It remains unclear who will appear on the list beneath Usame Zukorlic’s name, and when SPP’s campaign will begin. Also open is whether Ugljanin and Lekic, now that the joint bid has collapsed, will each run their own list or look for another partner before the filing deadline for election lists. Until then, SPP remains the only Bosniak party whose list name for October 25 is already known.