According to the State Election Commission, the partial repeat of the presidential election in the Serbian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Republika Srpska (RS), brought no change.
02/09/2026, 06:0402/09/2026, 06:04
The government candidate, Sinisa Karan, who won the election on November 23rd last year, remains RS President.
Sinisa Karan won the election in Republika Srpska (RS).Image: keystone
His challenger, the opposition candidate Branko Blanusa, admitted defeat. According to the electoral commission’s information from late Sunday evening, taking into account the results of the partial repeat election, Karan now received 224,384 votes and Blanusa 213,513 votes.
The election was repeated in 136 of around 2,200 polling stations in the RS. The electoral commission ordered this after it found serious irregularities and suspected fraud in the election on November 23rd. Blanusa could theoretically have reversed the result. On Sunday, 84,500 citizens were eligible to vote. Karan, a confidant of the SNSD leader and former RS president Milorad Dodik, won the November election with a lead of less than 10,000 votes.
Observers again notice irregularities
On this election Sunday, election observers also discovered irregularities such as putting pressure on voters and buying votes. “I am not disappointed,” said opposition candidate Blanusa. “This is about systemic problems in the election process that cannot be solved even through the use of scanners and new technologies,” Bosnian media quoted him as saying.
The presidential election in November was made necessary because a court in Sarajevo removed then RS President Dodik last summer because of separatist activities. Dodik determined the fate of the RS for almost two decades. As a Serbian nationalist, he tried to separate the RS from the Bosnian state.
Country divided in two
Since the end of the Bosnian War (1992-1995) 30 years ago, Bosnia-Herzegovina has consisted of two parts of the country: the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (FBIH), in which mainly Croats and Bosniaks (Muslims) live, and the Republika Srpska, which is predominantly inhabited by ethnic Serbs. The two administrative units are largely independent in areas that do not concern foreign, monetary, defense and security policy. (sda/dpa)