SARAJEVO/ISTANBUL

Sinisa Karan, widely considered a close ally and handpicked successor of former president Milorad Dodik, who was stripped of office over his separatist policies, won snap presidential elections in Republika Srpska, the Serb-majority entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina, preliminary results showed Sunday.

Voting began at 7 am local time (0600GMT) and concluded at 7 pm (1800GMT) across 2,211 polling stations in Republika Srpska and abroad.

Bosnia’s Central Election Commission (CIK) said that 443,472 of the more than 1.2 million eligible voters participated.

According to CIK President Jovan Kalaba, preliminary results show that Karan, the minister of scientific and technological development and higher education and former interior minister in the Republika Srpska government, backed by Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social Democrats party, is leading the race.

Karan received 50.89% of the vote, followed by Branko Blanusa of the Serbian Democratic Party, who garnered 47.81%. With 92% of the ballots counted, Karan had 200,116 votes and Blanusa 188,010, according to Kalaba.

Dodik acknowledged Karan’s victory and congratulated him while noting the low voter turnout.

Declaring victory, Karan said Republika Srpska posed no threat to anyone, adding: “We will continue from where we left off, with greater strength.”

The opposition, however, claimed that irregularities occurred in several cities and said it would appeal for those elections to be repeated.

Dodik, frequently in the news for his separatist rhetoric in Bosnia and Herzegovina, had stated that he does not recognize the Office of the High Representative (OHR), established by the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the 1992-1995 war in the country, and High Representative Christian Schmidt.

Under Dodik's leadership, the Republika Srpska National Assembly (NSRS) decided in June 2023 not to publish High Representative Schmidt's decisions in the entity's Official Gazette.

Schmidt, who had the authority to enact legislation when necessary, rejected Dodik's separatist steps and annulled the decisions made by the NSRS.

After Dodik continued his separatist stance, claiming that Republika Srpska will “secede from Bosnia and Herzegovina," an indictment was filed against him for "not respecting the OHR decisions," and a prison sentence was sought.

The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina sentenced Dodik to one year in prison and a six-year ban on holding political office in February 2025 for defying the high representative's decisions. It later commuted his sentence to a fine.

An appeals court upheld the six-year ban on holding political office in August. As a result, Dodik was removed from his position as president of Republika Srpska.