On Sunday, for the second time in less than three months, voters in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska entity will queue outside familiar polling stations, returning to cast ballots because the first attempt to elect a new entity president collapsed under the weight of irregularities.
What was meant to be a routine exercise in democracy has instead exposed the fragility of the system, turning what should have been a singular moment of choice into a recurring ritual of legal correction.
Voters in 17 local communities will again cast votes after the Central Election Commission, CEC, annulled the November 23 results at 136 polling stations due to violations of the election process.
Srdjan Blagovcanin, from the international watchdog organisation Transparency International, said the elections were being repeated because of “substantial and systemic irregularities” and “enormous abuses that affected the integrity, security and overall result”.
These irregularities were not isolated technical errors but violations that affected every phase of the electoral process – from voting and counting to the declaration of results.