Bosnian Serb political leader Milorad Dodik gathered tens of thousands of supporters at a rally in Banja Luka on Tuesday, a show of strength against an election vote recount, after the opposition cried foul.
Bosnia’s Central Election Commission (CIK) has ordered a recount of the October 2 presidential vote in the Republika Srpska (RS), the Bosnian Serb entity.
A preliminary count gave victory to Dodik, with the Kremlin-friendly leader wining 48 percent of the vote, compared to 43 percent for opposition candidate Jelena Trivic.
However, on the day after the election opposition parties accused Dodik and his party of “organised plundering of the elections”.
The election for the RS presidency was one of several votes held on October 2 at the central level and in the two entities, the RS and the Muslim-Croat federation, that make up the Balkan country, which has a complex political system.
“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 gathered in the central square of Banja Luka, the de facto capital of the Serb entity.
The opposition is calling for a fresh election, which Dodik is likely to refuse.
Final results of the recount are expected by the end of the week, and CIK chairman Suad Arnautovic has warned that there were “a huge number of violations of the election law” and also “unprecedented pressure on the Election Commission”.
One of those who rallied in support for the 63-year-old hardline nationalist on Tuesday was the acclaimed film director Emir Kusturica, Dodik’s voluntary advisor, who warmed of an “attempted coup d’etat”.
Dodik is seeking his third term as the president of the RS, after completing a stint in the tripartite presidency.
The Balkan state has been governed by a dysfunctional administrative system created by the 1995 Dayton Agreement that succeeded in ending the conflict in the 1990s, but largely failed in providing a framework for the country’s political development.
In the war’s wake, ethnic political parties have long exploited the country’s divisions in a bid to maintain power.
The elections saw the three established ethnic parties secure major wins.
The lone exception was the defeat Bakir Izetbegovic, a two-time member of the country’s tripartite president who also leads the main Bosniak party — the SDA.
Izetbegovic was clobbered by another professor, Denis Becirovic, in a double-digit landslide win.