By Daria Sito-Sucic
SARAJEVO (Reuters) -Bosnia’s election commission on Wednesday revoked the mandate of the separatist Bosnian Serb president after he rejected a court order jailing him for a year and banning him from political office for obstructing implementation of the 1995 peace deal.
The commission’s decision against Milorad Dodik will take effect after an appeals period expires. An early election for president of Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic would then be called within 90 days, commission member Suad Arnautovic told reporters.
The Russian-backed Dodik has rejected the verdict, which banned him from government for six years, saying he would keep going to work and vowing to seek help from both Moscow and U.S. President Donald Trump.
The nationalist Serb Republic (RS) government also dismissed the sentence and Dodik’s SNSD party invited the opposition to join it in the formation of a national unity government.
“Surrender is not an option,” Dodik said on his X profile after the electoral commission’s decision, which was issued in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and has little chance of being enforced without cooperation by Bosnian Serb authorities.
Dodik’s lawyer Goran Bubic said his team would ask Bosnia’s Constitutional Court to suspend implementation of the jail sentence and political ban pending the outcome of his appeal.
Leaders of Serbia, Russia and Hungary – all Dodik’s backers, dismissed the jail term and ban, saying they were politically motivated.
Dodik, who has long advocated secession of the RS from Bosnia, was sentenced in February for defying decisions of the Constitutional Court and international peace envoy, whose role is to prevent multi-ethnic Bosnia sliding back into civil war.
Dodik has seen through the passage of separatist laws in the RS parliament that were later temporarily suspended by the Constitutional Court. He also ignored a summons by state prosecutors, who then issued an arrest warrant for him.
Bosnia is suffering its worst political crisis since the 1992-95 war, which killed around 100,000 people. The peace accord divided the Balkan state into autonomous Serb and Bosniak-Croat federal entities with a weak central government.
(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; editing by Mark Heinrich)
