By Daria Sito-Sucic
BANJA LUKA/SARAJEVO, Bosnia (Reuters) -A close ally of Bosnia’s Serb Republic separatist leader Milorad Dodik won a snap presidential election in a tight race with opposition candidate, the election commission said on Sunday, citing preliminary results.
“According to preliminary, unofficial and incomplete results, Sinisa Karan won 50.89% of the votes,” Jovan Kalaba, the commission’s president, said at a news conference.
Kalaba said that opposition candidate Branko Blanusa of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) won 47.81% of the votes.
Turnout was low at 35.78%, compared with 53% during a general vote in 2022, he said. More than 1.2 million people were eligible to vote. The election commission announced results based on 92.87% of counted votes.
The presidential mandate will last for less than a year since a general election is scheduled next October.
The election was called after Dodik was stripped of his office and banned from politics for six years.
Karan, who currently serves as Serb Republic minister of scientific and technological development, pledged to continue Dodik’s policies “with ever greater force.”
“As always when the times were difficult, the Serb people have won,” Karan said after Dodik had announced his victory at the headquarters of their ruling Alliance of Independent Social Democrats party (SNSD) party in the town of Banja Luka.
The SDS said it would request the repetition of the vote at three polling stations, citing major election irregularities.
Postwar Bosnia comprises the Serb Republic and the Federation, shared by Croats and Bosniaks, linked via a weak central government.
Pro-Russian separatist Dodik was convicted in February of defying the constitutional court and an international peace envoy, leading to Bosnia’s biggest political crisis since the end of its devastating war 30 years ago.
He repeatedly rejected the verdict but in October unexpectedly appointed a loyal ally as his temporary replacement and annulled a series of separatist laws previously adopted in parliament.
Days later, the United States lifted sanctions imposed against him, his allies and family members, praising the move as a step towards the “stabilisation” of Bosnia.
(Reporting by Daria Sito-SucicEditing by Christina Fincher and Jane Merriman)
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