Bosnia's electoral commission said Wednesday, August 6 that the Bosnian Serb entity president, Milorad Dodik, had been formally stripped of his post after he was sentenced to a one-year jail term. The Republika Srpska president was given the prison sentence and banned from public office for six years after being found guilty of flouting the rulings of the international envoy who monitors the peace accords that ended the country's 1990 war.
The electoral body decided to apply the law, which lays down that an elected official is automatically forced out of office if sentenced to more than six months in jail, commission member Suad Arnautovic told reporters. He added though that an appeal can still be made to the Bosnian State Court. Dodik's lawyer, Goran Bubic, has already said that new legal action would be taken after the appeal court verdict.
The 66-year-old Dodik, who has headed the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska since 2006, had condemned last Friday's appeal court verdict as a "political" trial and a "blow" to the Serb entity "orchestrated by the European Union."
Bosnia has been divided between the Serb and Bosnian-Croat entities since the 1992-95 war that left tens of thousands dead. It is bound together by weak central institutions.
Dodik, 66, was prosecuted for passing two laws in 2023 that banned the application in the Serb entity of decisions by the international high representative and Bosnia's federal constitutional court. Dodik rejects the authority of the international representative, currently Christian Schmidt, who started in 2021. Dodik says the former German minister is "illegal" as his nomination has not been approved by the UN Security Council.