SARAJEVO, Feb 8 - Sinisa Karan, a close political ally of Milorad Dodik, announced he had won a partial rerun of the presidency in the Serb Republic on Sunday. The repeat contest was ordered after the original election in November was annulled because of reported irregularities.
Karan, representing the ruling SNSD party, had also been declared the winner in the November contest for the largely ceremonial presidency. His rival in the rerun, Branko Blanusa of the Serb Democratic Party, conceded defeat on Sunday but accused the SNSD of engaging in vote buying and what he called "election engineering."
At a news conference following the vote, Karan said:
"From now I am the president of all of you, of all citizens of the Republika Srpska."
The repeat ballot was narrowly targeted. It included only 136 polling stations and some 85,000 eligible voters - a small fraction of the overall electorate - but election officials and observers noted that the tight margins in November meant the rerun had the potential to affect the final outcome.
Preliminary results from the central election commission were expected later on Sunday.
Karan's term in the presidency will extend until the general election scheduled for October. He is a former minister in the Serb Republic and campaigned on a platform of continuing Dodik's separatist policies. Those policies, the campaign said, have been associated with blocking political reforms in Bosnia.
Branko Blanusa, a university professor and political newcomer supported by most Serb opposition parties, had positioned himself as an alternative to the ruling party's agenda. Despite his concession, Blanusa publicly accused the SNSD of undermining the integrity of the process.
The rerun follows a period of political upheaval in which Milorad Dodik - the region's former president - was stripped of office and banned from political activity for six years after refusing to comply with rulings by an international peace envoy and Bosnia's constitutional court.
Bosnia is composed of two autonomous entities: the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska and the Federation, inhabited primarily by Croats and Bosniaks. The two entities operate under a central government that has limited authority relative to the entities.
This article presents the sequence of events, the narrow scope of the rerun, the positions of the candidates, and the institutional context in which the vote occurred. It reflects the limited electorate involved in the repeat ballot and notes competing claims about the integrity of the process.