SARAJEVO, Feb 8 (Reuters) – A close ally of Bosnian Serb separatist leader Milorad Dodik declared victory in a partial rerun on Sunday of the Serb Republic’s presidential election, which was called due to irregularities in the original vote last November.
Sinisa Karan, of the republic’s ruling SNSD party, was also the victor in the November election for the largely ceremonial post. His opponent, Branko Blanusa of the Serb Democratic Party, conceded defeat in Sunday’s partial rerun but accused the ruling party of vote buying and “election engineering”.
“From now I am the president of all of you, of all citizens of the Republika Srpska,” Sinisa Karan said at a news conference. Bosnia’s central election commission is expected to release preliminary results of the vote later on Sunday.
The repeat vote was limited to a small portion of the electorate, covering just 136 polling stations and 85,000 eligible voters, but the close November tally raised the possibility that it could alter the final result.
Karan’s term will last until a general election scheduled for October.
The election in November was called after Dodik, the region’s former president, was stripped of office and banned from politics for six years for defying rulings by an international peace envoy and Bosnia’s constitutional court.
Bosnia is made up of two autonomous regions, the Serb-dominated Serb Republic and the Federation, shared by Croats and Bosniaks, which are combined under a weak central government.
Karan, a former government minister in the Serb Republic, campaigned to continue Dodik’s separatist policies that have blocked political reforms in Bosnia.
“This is the night when we start anew to do what we have been doing over the past 23 years but with ever more vigour,” he said.
Blanusa, a university professor, was a political newcomer supported by most Serb opposition parties.
(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Edmund Klamann)
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