elect

Vote occurs amid rising secessionist rhetoric in the Serb-majority entity and Milorad Dodik’s defiance of the Dayton peace treaty.

People are casting their votes in Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Serb-majority political entity, in a snap presidential election called after electoral authorities stripped separatist Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik of the presidency in August.

Dodik was removed from office for defying Bosnia’s international peace envoy, Christian Schmidt, after his conviction for ignoring rulings by the international appointee, who oversees a peace deal that has held Bosnia together since the end of its 1992-1995 war, which killed tens of thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands more.

The court also handed him a one-year prison sentence, which he avoided by posting bail, and banned him from participating in politics for six years. Bosnia’s top court upheld that ruling in early November.

The election is seen as a crucial test of support for Dodik’s nationalist party, which has been in power for nearly two decades.

The early vote means the winner will serve less than a year before a general election in October. About 1.2 million voters are eligible to choose between six candidates.

The two main favourites to replace Dodik are Sinisa Karan, a 63-year-old former interior minister who is a close ally and Dodik’s personal choice. Dodik remains head of his party, the Union of Independent Social Democrats.

The main opposition group, the Serb Democratic Party, selected Branko Blanusa, a 56-year-old electrical engineering professor who has repeatedly levelled corruption allegations against Dodik and his party.

Preliminary results are expected on election night, but the final official vote count by the Central Election Commission will be announced only after the body also validates all outcomes.

Republika Srpska is one of two main political entities within Bosnia along with the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, each of which enjoys significant autonomy. The two share equal rights over a third, small self-governing administrative unit within the country, known as the Brcko District.

Republika Srpska was proclaimed by Bosnian Serb leaders in 1992 at the start of the war and was formally established as part of Bosnia’s post-war constitutional structure in 1995 under the Dayton peace agreement.

Today, it is overwhelmingly Serb-populated with Serbs making up 82 percent of its residents alongside smaller Bosniak and Croat minorities, according to the latest census, which was held more than a decade ago in 2013.

Its first president, Radovan Karadzic, has been sentenced to life by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague for the 1995 genocide against Bosniaks in Srebrenica, now a town inside Republika Srpska.

Nov. 6 (UPI) — On this date in history:

In 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected 16th president of the United States.

In 1861, Jefferson Davis was elected president of the Confederate States of America.

In 1869, in the first formal intercollegiate football game, Rutgers beat Princeton, 6-4.

In 1928, Republican Herbert Hoover was elected 31st president of the United States, defeating Democrat Al Smith.

In 1956, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was re-elected by a wide margin.

In 1965, a formal agreement between the United States and Cuba allowed Cubans who wanted to leave the island nation for America to do so. More than 250,000 Cubans had taken advantage of this opportunity by 1971.

In 1984, U.S. President Ronald Reagan was elected to a second term, winning 49 states.

File Photo by Mal Langsdon/UPI

In 1985, members of the 19th of April Movement took over the Palace of Justice in Bogota, Colombia. The leftist guerrillas would kill more than 100 people (11 of whom where Supreme Court Justices) by the time the siege ended.

In 1991, Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued a decree banning the Communist Party, nationalizing its property and condemning its activities.

File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI

In 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama defeated Republican challenger Mitt Romney to win a second term. Federal finance reports showed campaign expenditures broke the $2 billion mark, making the election the most expensive in U.S. history at the time.

In 2013, Avigdor Lieberman, who had resigned as Israel’s foreign minister because of an investigation of alleged corruption, was acquitted and said: “This chapter is behind me. I am now focusing on the challenges ahead.” Lieberman became foreign minister again five days later.

In 2019, the U.S. midterm elections saw a number of milestones and firsts — Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., were the first Muslim women elected to the House; Sharice Davids, D-Kan., and Debra Haaland, D-N.M., were the first Native American women elected to the House; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., was the youngest person elected to the House in nearly three decades; and Jared Polis became the country’s first openly gay male governor, in Colorado. Democrats also took back control of the House, while Republicans held onto the Senate.

In 2024, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz dismissed Finance Minister Christian Lindner, resulting in the collapse of his three-party coalition government. A month later, Scholz lost a confidence vote in parliament, triggering an election in February that saw conservative Friedrich Merz put into power.

File Photo by Leo Correa/UPI