2 yıl önce

Bosnia recounts Serb presidential votes amid fraud allegations

Election commission has seen “some material evidence, video recordings and documents, which undoubtedly prove that this process has been contaminated and that it is not possible to confirm the results,” said its president.

Reuters

Bosnian Serb opposition protests against an allegedly rigged vote, in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, October 6, 2022.

Bosnia and Herzegovina has ordered a recount of last week's vote for president of the Balkan country's Serb entity, after the opposition disputed the preliminary results calling the elections "a fraud".

The preliminary count suggested that current Bosnian Serb political leader Milorad Dodik, who nurtures close ties with the Kremlin, had won some 30,000 votes more than right-wing opposition candidate Jelena Trivic.

The votes from all 2,239 polling stations in Republika Srpska will be recounted, Bosnia's Central Election Commission (CIK) President Suad Arnautovic said.

The election commission has seen "some material evidence, video recordings and documents, which undoubtedly prove that this process has been contaminated and that it is not possible to confirm the results" of the vote, Arnautovic said during a live broadcast of the CIK session.

The decision was made after six out of seven members of the commission voted in favour, and ordered the main counting centre in Sarajevo to reopen the bags of ballots and count them again, he added.

Irregularities in votes

Dodik, who declared victory after the preliminary count suggested he had won 48 percent of the vote compared to Trivic's 43 percent, rejected these accusations and said his victory was "beyond reproach".

Dodik told the RTRS TV that his SNSD party would appeal the decision on the ballot recount with the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and accused the electoral commission of having acted under "political influence".

"We have won these elections, the people have won. RS will remain peaceful and stable, but I am glad that (thus) we have accelerated our path towards independence," Dodik said on Monday.

Opposition leaders had last week called on the electoral commission to recount the ballots, saying they had "found hundreds of cases of irregularities involving more than 65,000 votes".

Thousands protested at rallies held on Thursday and Sunday in Banja Luka against what opposition leaders describe as "brutal and mafia-like looting".

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 Bosniak-Croat federation, that make up the Balkan country, which has a complex political system.