Milorad Dodik at one of the campaign rallies. Photo: BIRN.
Early elections for the presidency of the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina are being held on Sunday, as 1.2 million registered voters choose a successor to Milorad Dodik after a campaign marred by discriminatory rhetoric.
Preliminary polls suggest the two front-runners are Sinisa Karan, a member of Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, and Branko Blanusa, from the Serbian Democratic Party, SDS, who is supported by the opposition parties in the entity.
The election campaign, instead of running for a month as usual, opened only two weeks before the vote – and has focused mostly on social media, with little effort invested in rallies or billboards.
“The campaign didn’t really bring anything interesting, as it was kind of forced to happen,” Mladen Bubonjic, a political analyst from Banja Luka, told BIRN. “As these are early elections, the [new] mandate will last only until the next general elections, in October next year,” he added.
Besides Karan and Blanusa, the Central Election Commission has certified the candidacies of Dragan Djokanovic (Alliance for New Politics), Nikola Lazarevic (Ecological Party of Republika Srpska), as well as independent candidates Igor Gasevic and Slavko Dragicevic.
The election was called after the Central Election Commission terminated Dodik’s mandate following his conviction for not complying with the decision of the country’s international overseer, the High Representative, which brought Dodik a six-year ban on holding public office.
The Commission did not automatically bar Dodik from continuing to serve as SNSD party leader – a position he used throughout the election campaign.
Dodik opened the campaign by attacking Bosniaks as “enemies” and as a “destructive force” against Republika Srpska.
“One can smell the stench coming from Sarajevo, which for centuries has prevented normal life here,” said Dodik in one of his first campaign messages.
He called Bosnia a failed state in which different ethnic groups cannot live together. He continued this divisive rhetoric at a rally in East Sarajevo, where he said that what he described as further “Islamisation” must not be allowed.
“What has been done in East Ilidza [in Republika Srpska]? It has simply allowed Muslims to live there, hasn’t it? Do you think that is a blessing? You know that better than I do. Where one of them moves in, it is like amoebas settling in,” he said.
The following day, the Central Election Commission launched proceedings against the SNSD over this statement, followed by two further complaints, after which the party was fined 30,000 Bosnian marks, or some 15,000 euros.