21 Oct 2010 / 03:12
Bosnia's election commission has ordered a recount of votes declared void in the October 3 general elections in the country, a move which could change the outcome for the Serb seat on the central presidency.
Sabina Arslanagic
The commission specifically ordered the recount of void ballots cast in the race for Serb seat in the country's tripartite presidency amid accusations by moderate opposition Party of Democratic Progress, PDP, of widespread rigging.
The commission said 66,138 void ballots would be counted – well above the narrow margin of 9,697 which gave victory to hardliner Nebojsa Radmanovic, the candidate of the nationalist Bosnian Serb party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD.
The PDP candidate Mladen Ivanic, who lost by less then two per cent, said earlier he knew he had been “robbed”, but that it was even worse that “citizens had been robbed of their right to chose”.
“During the election campaign I was exposed to unprecedented pressure, obstructions and attacks by the media, but voters did not let that influence them,” Ivanic said in a recent interview.
“The support I got… gives me a huge amount of satisfaction,” he added.
Prior to the polls, analysts predicted that Radmanovic would win by a wide margin due to the huge popularity his party and its populist leader Milorad Dodik enjoy among Bosnian Serbs.
Ivanic’s strong showing came as a surprise to many, especially since he was often attacked by Bosnian Serb media, which are widely believed to be under Dodik’s control.
While the SNSD campaign was dominated by threats of secession of Bosnia's predominantly Serb region from the rest of the country, Ivanic mainly campaigned on economic reform.
Under the Dayton Peace Agreement which ended Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, the country was split into two semi-autonomous entities – the predominantly Serb Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat federation. Each entity has its own parliament, government and president but the two are linked by weak central institutions.
The Bosnian election commission published final results of the vote on Monday, leaving three days for complaints by political parties, election observers and citizens.
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