The new Mostar City Council Speaker, Salem Maric, congratulated Mario Kordic on his election as Mayor and apologized on his own and on behalf of the Coalition for Mostar to the public, which had watched "unpleasant scenes" in the Council, Anadolu Agency reports.

“This is the third election cycle in which Bosniaks or pro-Bosnian parties had a majority, but unfortunately we never got a Mayor. It's up to us. I still call for great unity, because we have never needed it more. Unfortunately, we had not only honest players from HDZ BiH against us, but we also played against much stronger players whom we didn’t expect to be in the opposite team. They were against the BH Bloc, and they wanted to get the position of Mayor in every possible way, without winning the election. … The Office of the High Representative was also against us. They once again sided with the Croat National Council (HNS) and the Croat Democratic Union (HDZ BiH). We were primarily opposed by the BH Bloc party leaders, who used the media space every day to divide the Coalition for Mostar and the BH bloc so that we wouldn’t get the position of the Mayor. … Unfortunately, a councillor who calls himself the legitimate Serb representative in the Council was also against us. All in all the pro-Bosnian parties in the Council didn’t stand a chance,” Maric said.

He thanked the Coalition for Mostar councillors, primarily those not coming from his own Democratic Action party (SDA) who remained united “despite the attacks against their unity.”

The centre lect coalition called the BH Bloc consists of the Democratic Front (DF), the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Nasa Stranka (Our Party, NS). They had their own candidate, Irma Baralija, who did not pass into the second round for Mayor.

Coalition for Mostar, on the other hand, which consists of Democratic Action Party (SDA), Alliance for the Better Future (SBB), Democratic Front (DF), Party for BIH (SBiH) and the Bosnian Patriot Party (BPS) managed to get into the second round of voting with their candidate Zlatko Guzin, who lost to the HDZ’s Mario Kordic in the third round with only one vote lead.