The leader of the ruling coalition in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian entity of Republika Srpska (RS), Milorad Dodik, stated today that for his party, the presidential elections are over and that they will not be repeated in Doboj, Zvornik and Laktaši, as demanded by the opposition, which claims that there was electoral fraud in those towns.
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"We reject the opposition's claims for places where we received a significant number of votes. We do not dispute that we lost in Banja Luka by a margin of 14.000 and we are not asking for a repeat of the elections in Banja Luka. But there will be no repeat of the elections in Doboj, for us the elections are over and done with," Dodik told reporters in Banja Luka.
The day after the snap elections, in which ruling coalition candidate Siniša Karan is leading against opposition candidate Branko Blanusa, Dodik said that the opposition would not win even if the elections in Doboj were repeated.
Dodik stated that Blanusa, who was nominated by the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), is close to Karan because 20.000 Bosniaks from Republika Srpska voted for him.
He accused opposition parties of intending to win the presidency of Republika Srpska, with the help of Bosniaks and the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Kristijan Šmit, but added that they "did not succeed".
"We knew before the elections that the opposition could pull in 18.000 to 20.000 Bosniak votes, who voted for their candidate Blanusa, thus making these elections more uncertain. Bosniaks had the opportunity to vote and harm Republika Srpska, and they did so," Dodik added.
Dodik, leader of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), also said that Karan, who was nominated by that party, "can also thank Donald Trump for becoming US president."
He said that the SNSD "is not particularly in the mood for the election victory" and announced that they would approach elections differently in the future, stating that it was necessary to determine why a large number of citizens did not want to vote. Turnout was around 37 percent.
"We'll see where the problem was. People on the ground are telling us that people didn't want to come out because they thought it was unfair to come out because of what happened to the president (me), that the elections were imposed by Schmidt or that they resigned. We'll see if that's the case," Dodik said.
According to preliminary incomplete results of the snap elections for the president of Republika Srpska, announced by the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CIK BiH), Karan won around 8.500 votes more than Blanusa.
The opposition SDS announced that it does not recognize Karan's victory because it has "explicit evidence" that there was electoral fraud in Doboj, Zvornik and Laktaši, and that it will request that the BiH Central Election Commission repeat the elections in those three cities.
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