Lawmakers in the Serb-run half of Bosnia-Herzegovina voted to hold a referendum in defiance of central authorities who recently ordered the Bosnian Serb leader out of office amid growing ethnic tensions in the Balkan nation.
The move, which was approved unanimously by parliament in Banja Luka late Friday, was proposed by Milorad Dodik after the country’s top court in capital Sarajevo stripped him of his mandateBloomberg Terminal as president of Republika Srpska and banned him from political office earlier this month. Previously, Dodik has clashed with Bosnia’s High Representative, Christian Schmidt, a German diplomat tasked with overseeing the implementation of a US-brokered peace accord that ended the brutal war in 1995.