Sinisa Karan, supported by Dodik, wins the Bosnian Serb presidency | news

Yesterday, Sunday, official preliminary results showed the victory of Sinisa Karan, the candidate of Milorad Dodik, the dismissed president of the Republika Srpska, in the early presidential elections for this Serb entity in Bosnia, also known as Republika Srpska.

Sinisa Karan received 50.89% of the votes, compared to 47.81% for his rival, opposition candidate Branko Planosa, according to results published by the Central Electoral Commission after counting about 93% of the votes.

Election Commission Chairman Jovan Kalaba stated that turnout was low at 35.78%, compared to 53% during a general election in 2022, while there are more than 1.2 million people eligible to vote.

The presidential mandate will last for less than a year, as general elections are scheduled for next October.

Elections after a crisis

The elections were called after former President Milorad Dodik was stripped of his position and banned from practicing politics for 6 years.

This vote aims to end a period of unrest in Bosnia, which witnessed a power struggle between Milorad Dodik, a close ally of Moscow, and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs responsible for monitoring the peace agreement signed in 1995, which pushed the country into the most serious political crisis since the end of the war.

The President of the Republic is responsible for appointing the Prime Minister and issuing laws, but his powers remain limited in the absence of a parliamentary majority.

While the Supreme Representative has broad powers that include imposing or amending laws, and dismissing elected officials. Dodik has repeatedly denounced these powers, and directed many insults and threats to the current international envoy Christian Schmidt, the former German minister who took office in 2021.

As a result, Dodik was sentenced in August to one year in prison after appeal, which was later converted to a fine. He was also banned from holding any public office for 6 years for not complying with the decisions of the international envoy.

After challenging the government, he finally accepted the election of a successor just before Washington lifted the sanctions that had targeted him for nearly 10 years because of his separatist policies.

The vote will determine whether the Bosnian Serb-dominated region will move away from Dodik’s nationalist agenda or continue with separatist policies that threaten the internal cohesion of the Balkan country.

Republika Srpska, along with the Croat-Muslim Federation, is one of the two autonomous entities that make up Bosnia and Herzegovina.