SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Bosnian Serb nationalist politician Milorad Dodik declared his party’s victory in the elections in Bosnia Sunday, which has been shaped by economic pressures, the prospect of the Balkan nation joining the European Union and ethnic tensions that have divided the country since its brutal war of 1992-95.
Dodik is a staunchly pro-Russian politician who, although not on the ballot, dominated the campaign and stoked divisions with separatist rhetoric that raised fears of further instability in Bosnia.
A former president of Republika Srpska, the country’s Serb-majority entity, Dodik was barred from holding public office after being convicted last year of defying decisions by the international envoy overseeing the 1995 peace deal that ended the war.
With nearly 90 percent of the votes counted, Dodik’s ally Zeljka Cvijanovic of the right-wing Alliance of Independent Social Democrats secured more than 55 percent of the vote to win one of the three seats in the country’s tripartite presidency, edging out her closest opponent by about 30 percentage points.
Speaking at a news conference Sunday evening, Dodik said his nationalist party would also hold a “vast majority” in the Republika Srpska assembly, and credited U.S. President Donald Trump’s “magnificent victory” in 2024 and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s support for the election victory.
“No one should ask us to change our policy,” Dodik said. “We will not give up, but will continue for our people…I can’t believe we broke them this way.”
Election marked by low participation
About 3.4 million voters were eligible to elect the three members of the country’s multi-ethnic presidency, lawmakers in the national parliament and heads of institutions in the country’s two entities: the Muslim-majority Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the ethnic Serb-dominated Republika Srpska.
With more than 94 percent of votes counted on Sunday, Darijana Filipovic of the nationalist Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina held a commanding lead for the Croatian seat in the presidency, while incumbent Bosnian member of the presidency Denis Becirovic of the Social Democratic Party led his closest opponent, Bakir Izetbegovic, by less than three percentage points.
Filipovic and Becirovic declared victory on Sunday evening before all the votes were counted.
Bosnia’s Central Election Commission said 1,432,269 votes were cast in total, a turnout of 42%, down about 8% from Bosnia’s last elections in 2022.
Bosnia has a complex network of government institutions that were created by a 1995 U.S.-brokered peace deal to manage the ethnic divisions between Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats that gave rise to the war.
Yet Dodik constantly tested these limits, openly defying Bosnia’s national government in the capital Sarajevo and taking steps to have Republika Srpska secede from the country.
At his party’s final election rally Friday evening in Banja Luka, the administrative capital of Republika Srpska, Dodik told supporters that Bosnia “is dead.”
“This is an impossible country. It makes no sense,” Dodik said at the rally also attended by Russian Ambassador Igor Khalabukov.
Such political and ethnic divisions – in which Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats vote largely along ethnic lines – have blocked Bosnia’s progress toward EU membership, despite the bloc’s efforts to encourage the country’s divided leaders to work together for reforms.
Dragan Bursac, an analyst, said that even though Dodik did not appear on the ballot for the first time in nearly 30 years, he “is still in charge. He is everywhere.”
“It is obvious that these measures to ban him from political life are not working and he is using them,” Bursac said.
The vote took place as ethnic tensions simmer
One of Europe’s poorest countries, Bosnia is still struggling to recover decades after the war that began in 1992, after the country declared independence from the Serb-led former Yugoslavia and ethnic Serbs took up arms to create their own state and join Serbia. The conflict has killed more than 100,000 people and displaced millions.
Bosnia’s war wounds were recently revived by a public tribute in Serbia and among Bosnian Serbs to the commander of the war army. Ratko Mladicdied in late August while serving a life sentence for genocide and other war crimes.
Bosnian Serbs consider Mladic a hero despite his conviction by a UN tribunal for the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995 and other atrocities.
Introduction of electronic election security
Sunday’s election was the first time Bosnia used electronic voter identification and ballot scanners to prevent irregularities or organized voter manipulation, which has sowed doubt about the fairness of previous elections.
On Sunday morning, Associated Press journalists reported seeing several polling places where voting was unable to start on time due to difficulties with new digital technology. Bosnia’s electoral commission announced Sunday evening that some polling stations that experienced disruptions earlier in the day would be allowed to remain open beyond 7 p.m.
On Sunday, some voters in Banja Luka expressed concern that new digital systems could confuse older voters. The Republika Srpska Interior Ministry said in a statement that out of 1,957 polling stations in the entity, 201 experienced delays.
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