SARAJEVO
\nBosnia\u2019s Serb statelet, whose President Milorad Dodik is defying a ban on him holding office, will stage a referendum on October 25 on the federal court verdict against him.
\nLawmakers in the Republika Srpska\u2019s (RS) regional parliament late Friday voted for the referendum as the political crisis around Dodik worsened, with his prime minister resigning on Monday, triggering a government reshuffle.
\nDodik, 66, was convicted in February by a Bosnian federal court of undermining the fragile functioning of the Balkan country by flouting decisions by the international envoy enforcing a peace deal that ended Bosnia\u2019s 1992-1995 war.
\nDodik avoided a one-year prison sentence by paying a 19,000-euro ($22,000) fine, but an appeals court upheld a ruling that he be removed from the RS presidency and banned from political office for six years.
\nThe regional leader, who has been in his post for seven years, has vowed to block elections in the Republika Srpska and to hold a series of referendums.
\nThe one voted for late Friday was the first of those.
\nThe question to appear on the October ballot, Bosnian Serb lawmakers decided, was: \u201cDo you accept the decisions of the unelected foreigner (international envoy Christian Schmidt) and the unconstitutional verdict of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Court against the President of the RS, as well as the decision of the Bosnian Electoral Commission to revoke the mandate of the President of the RS, Milorad Dodik?\u201c
\nOf the 65 lawmakers present in the RS parliament, 50 voted in favor. Opposition lawmakers in the chamber refused to cast a vote.
\n\u201cI won\u2019t get in your way… but you\u2019re walking on a minefield,\u201d warned one opposition member of parliament, Nebojsa Vukanovic, a fierce critic of Dodik.
\nDodik has said he expects the Serbian population of the Republika Srpska to massively vote \u201cno\u201d to the referendum question. He has also threatened to hold a later referendum on independence for the Serbian entity.
\nThe nationalist Bosnian Serb leader has been in power since 2006. He blames Schmidt, a former German minister who has been the international envoy for Bosnia since 2021, for his ordered ouster.
\nThe RS parliament late Friday also adopted a number of \u201cconclusions,\u201d including one rejecting Schmidt\u2019s authority, another demanding that Dodik continue as the statelet\u2019s president, and one rejecting elections to choose a successor to him.
\nWith the federal ban on Dodik holding office, Bosnia\u2019s electoral commission is expected to call early elections for the RS presidency, which must be held within 90 days.
\nThe outgoing RS prime minister, Radovan Viskovic, did not explain why he was resigning, in a Monday press conference held in the regional capital, Banja Luka.
\nHe stated only that a new government would be formed, and that \u201cI leave my successor a stable Republika Srpska.\u201d
\nViskovic was accused along with Dodik of undermining Bosnia\u2019s constitutional order after the RS parliament voted to bar federal police and the judiciary from operating in the Serb entity.
\nBoth have also been sanctioned by the United States for threatening the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement and undermining Bosnia and Herzegovina\u2019s sovereignty.
\nBosnia has been split between Serbian and Bosnian-Croat political units since the end of the 1990s war, in which tens of thousands died. The country is held together by weak central institutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SARAJEVO Bosnia\u2019s Serb statelet, whose President Milorad Dodik is defying a ban on him holding office, will stage a referendum on October 25 on the federal court verdict against him. Lawmakers in the Republika Srpska\u2019s (RS) regional parliament late Friday voted for the referendum as the political crisis around Dodik worsened, with his prime minister […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498678,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-498670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n