Recount ordered for Bosnia’s Serb entity presidential vote

Sarajevo, Oct 10 (AFP/APP):Bosnia on Monday ordered a recount of last week’s vote for president of 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.

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 television that his SNSD party would appeal the decision on the ballots recount with the Court of Bosnia-Hercegovina 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 Thursday and Sunday in Banja Luka — the de facto capital of Bosnian Serb entity — against what opposition leaders describe as “brutal and mafia-like looting”.