Sinisa Karan after declaring victory following the February 8 vote. Photo: Milorad Dodik/X.
Sinisa Karan will be the president of Bosnia’s Republika Srpska entity after narrowly winning the rerun vote in some of the entity’s polling stations on Sunday, according to preliminary results.
Karan, a member of Milorad Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD party, will hold the position until the October 2026 general election.
The presidential election was held after Dodik’s removal from the office in August last year.
Dodik was ousted amid a major political crisis in the country, after he was sentenced to one year in prison and received a six-year ban on holding the office of the president for not complying with the decisions of Bosnia’s international peace overseer, the High Representative.
Karan first thanked the voters, singling out in particular the Serb people and his party, the SNSD, saying that his election represents “not only support for Sinisa Karan, but for Republika Srpska”.
“Thank you for, through me, through my little name, defending what we have already defended several in this way – the sovereignty of the Serb people to decide for themselves,” Karan said soon after the polling stations closed.
“We are the creators of responsible policy. This is the night when we begin again, but work even harder at what we have been doing for 23 years [since the SNSD came to power in the entity], working in the interest of our citizens, our republic and even those who did not vote for us,” he added.
Voters in 17 local communities cast their votes on Sunday for the second time in less than three months after the Central Election Commission, CEC, annulled the results from 136 polling stations of the previous election on November 23 due to violations of the electoral process.
The turnout on Sunday was 49.51 per cent. A total of 84,474 voters were eligible to vote, of whom 41,826 cast their ballots.
After the results of Sunday’s ballot were added to the results of the November poll that were not annulled, SNSD candidate Karan won with 224,384 votes, while opposition candidate Blanusa received 213,513 votes.
At the election headquarters of his Serb Democratic Party, SDS party, Blanusa thanked opposition activists for their work on the election.
“I also want to thank all the people who went out to vote and those who voted freely. In the end, I must say this is very surprising. We have seen in recent days everything that was happening at polling stations. I will not speak about what was observed, but enormous resources were invested in these elections through blackmail and other practices, which was particularly evident in vote-buying,” Blanusa said.
Before Karan can assume office, the CEC must confirm the election results, which will happen in the next seven days.
In total, 1,264,364 voters were eligible to vote in the presidentnial election, including 20,269 who voted by post, while 258 voters cast their ballots at Bosnia and Herzegovina’s diplomatic-consular missions in Munich, Berlin, Vienna and Belgrade.