Bosnian Serb political leader Milorad Dodik was declared the winner of the presidency of Bosnia’s Serb entity on Thursday 27 October 2023. The announcement took place after a recount prompted by the opposition.
Thursday’s result comes weeks after Bosnians cast ballots in a dizzying range of contests in early October that included a race for the president of Republika Srpska (RS) – the country’s Serb entity.
Bosnia has been governed by a dysfunctional administrative system created by the 1995 Dayton Accords that succeeded in ending the conflict in the 1990s, but largely failed in providing a framework for the country’s political development.
The recount “confirmed that the candidate Milorad Dodik representing the Serb people and who was in the lead… and remained so with the greatest number of votes won,” said Suad Arnautovic, chairman of the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The final figures for the race were still being compiled, according to officials, who said the opposition still had a narrow window to contest their findings.
A preliminary count following the election gave the victory for the RS presidency to Dodik – with the Kremlin-friendly leader winning 48 percent of the vote compared to 43 percent for opposition candidate Jelena Trivic.
The Central Election Commission said the repeated count revealed numerous irregularities it had notified judicial authorities about, but that none were on a level that would have changed the outcome of the vote.
On the day after the election, opposition parties accused Dodik and his party of “organised plundering of the elections” and demanded a recount.
Thursday’s announcement comes just days after Dodik rallied thousands of supporters in the RS’s capital of Banja Luka, where the longtime leader of the country’s Serbs remained defiant that he would be victorious in the race for the presidency.
“I am here tonight to tell you that Milorad Dodik is going nowhere. Milorad Dodik will be in the presidential palace very soon,” Dodik told the crowd.
The recount cements Dodik’s third term as the president of the RS, after he completed a stint in the tripartite presidency.
For years, Dodik has been stoking tensions with his frequent calls for Bosnia’s Serbs to separate even further from the country’s central institutions, earning him fresh sanctions from the United States in January.
Running on an anti-corruption ticket, Dodik’s rival Trivic – a 39-year-old professor of economics – sought to offer an alternative to RS voters, while also trumpeting the Serbs’ desire to maintain their autonomy in Bosnia.