CEC: Vote recount to be considered after final results

REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

The Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina said on Wednesday it would not be considering the election recount requests yet as the process of the preliminary results publishing is still ongoing.

In a statement for media, the Commission said it would be publishing the general election results in the following days and that final results will be available only after the votes from the regular polling stations, absentee ballots, the ballots from abroad, mobile teams’ and the unconfirmed ballots are counted.

The requests for the vote recount can be submitted within the three days after the official results are published, under the conditions prescribed by the law, the Commission said.

Two parties whose candidates were defeated in the run for the state Presidency, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Party of Democratic Progress (PDP), so far expressed suspicions over the regularity of the election preliminary results and announced they would request the vote recount.

“The whole election process was full of the threats and the blackmailing,” said PDP leader Branislav Borenovic, adding that many “illogical things” were noticed.

PDP's Mladen Ivanic lost in the race for the Serb member of the state tripartite Presidency as a candidate of the Alliance for Victory (SzP), an opposition coalition, being defeated by Milorad Dodik, the leader of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) who won over 60,000 votes more than his opponent. The opposition's candidate for the President of Bosnia's Serb-dominated entity, Republika Srpska (RS) lost to SNSD's in a more narrow defeat of less than 30,000 votes.

SDP's Denis Becirovic lost by some 30,000 votes to Sefik Dzaferovic, a candidate of the centre-right Party of Democratic Action (SDA), in the race for the Bosniak member of the state Presidency, according to the latest preliminary election results.