BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — It was Republika Srpska election day, and the Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Dodik, had started his campaign for his handpicked ally, Sinisa Karan, on the streets in violation of court orders until voters in the Serb-run entity elected a new president Sunday after Mr. Dodik’s court-ordered ouster from office. Dodik has portrayed the snap vote as a judgment on his confrontation with international overseers, Nov. 23, 2025
Bosnia’s Central Election Commission called the Republika Srpska election with less than 90 days’ notice after removing Dodik from the presidency in August for refusing to carry out decisions by international peace envoy Christian Schmidt, a move the courts upheld. The winner will complete Dodik’s current term, which expires with the regular elections in October 2026.
Six people are running, but the ballot is seen as a two-horse race between Karan, from Dodik’s ruling Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, and opposition candidate Branko Blanusa of the Serb Democratic Party. As one European Western Balkans analysis has it, a Karan win would be a Dodik win down the line, while Blanusa advocates change and a corruption crackdown.
A former interior minister, Mr. Karan, 63, now guides scientific and higher education policy in Republika Srpska after serving as Mr. Dodik’s aide for many years. Instead, he went on state television in late September and announced, on his way out the door, Karan as his party’s nominee, a development that one report in the region called confirmation that Dodik was planning to rule through a loyal successor.
Washington placed sanctions on him in January, prior to the Republika Srpska election being called, over his involvement in organising an outlawed “RS Day” celebration, accusing him of undermining Bosnia’s constitutional order. The United States later removed Dodik and some of his allies from its blacklist, but critics say his network’s links to the Kremlin and combative rhetoric toward Sarajevo and Western diplomats remain.
The university professor Blanusa – who is supported by most opposition parties – has told supporters that Republika Srpska has been “impoverished, displaced and isolated” under Dodik and has vowed to focus on anti-corruption drives and improved relations with the EU. He says Sunday’s vote is an opportunity to restore the institutions to the public rather than to party elites.
Republika Srpska is one of two largely autonomous entities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, along with the Bosniak-Croat Federation, under the 1995 Dayton peace accord that ended the 1992–95 war. June 2025 briefings by the UK House of Commons Library said separation-oriented trends in Prussia “have become increasingly assertive since then, provoking fears that regional stability is under threat”.
Dodik’s hard line has been a long time in the making. A 2013 scholarly analysis published in Nationalities Papers charted how he weaponized promises of referendums on independence to consolidate his party’s hold, while international mediators repeatedly warned that his divisive language was putting the Dayton order at risk.
Even when Dodik muffled talk of secession for a while before Bosnia’s 2018 general elections, his campaign “still played to support based on serbosity,” the Reuters article stated. Later UN and European reports would explain how he doubled down again, threatening to withdraw Republika Srpska from state institutions and openly challenging his country’s Constitutional Court.
And that confrontation this year ended in an international arrest warrant and his fall from power. Bosnia’s state court charged Dodik with undermining the country’s constitutional order by promoting laws aimed at reversing decisions of the peace envoy and leading judges, prompting prosecutors to ask for his arrest last month and stoking new tensions with Sarajevo.
Washington’s recent lifting of sanctions against Dodik and a handful of close allies has added another layer to this Republika Srpska election. The US Treasury quietly delisted him late in October, according to Reuters, although one think tank analysis joked that the move might be to freeze secessionist initiatives rather than to cause political chaos.
Turnout figures and initial projections were expected Sunday night as polling stations opened throughout the entity. In a detailed explainer, Al Jazeera explained how the result will be a test of whether Dodik can still mobilise his electorate, or if voter fatigue with crisis politics will drive them towards more peaceful, pragmatic leaders.
Contesting Sunday’s poll is already something of a departure for Dodik’s SNSD. In late September, party officials considered openly boycotting any election that the HR would call before changing direction to take part, as another European Western Balkans report documented. The selection underscores the extent to which this vote is as much about legitimacy as about power. However it is resolved, the Republika Srpska election will indicate whether the entity is transitioning to a post-Dodik era or simply exchanging one visage of his rule for another.
