Trump Allies Cruise To Victory In Balkan Country’s Election

BANJA LUKA, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA — A pro-Trump party in Bosnia and Herzegovina easily retained one of the country’s high offices despite the previous conviction and imprisonment of its leader as well as considerable problems with the Balkan nation’s new voting technology.

Noted Trump ally and former Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik, leader of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), which dominates the Serb-majority entity, saw his party win big in the Sunday election. Preliminary results published by the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina showed Dodik ally Željka Cvijanović securing another term as the Serb member of Bosnia’s three-person presidency in a landslide.

Cvijanović previously served as both prime minister and president of Republika Srpska, according to her official Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina biography.

Dodik has repeatedly praised Trump for his support of Christian sovereignty worldwide. The autonomous entity he once led is one of two that make up Bosnia and Herzegovina under the U.S.-brokered Dayton Peace Agreement, alongside the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to the country’s Dayton-established constitution.

“If it hadn’t been for Donald Trump’s magnificent victory and for his removal of the detested Biden structures, we would today be politically dead,” Dodik said at a rally celebrating his party’s victory, Bloomberg reported. “But thanks to a new political environment, we are now political winners.”

Dodik has repeatedly stressed that his allegiance to Trump stretches back to the president’s first run for office.

“We never hesitated to support him and his policies,” Dodik told the DCNF. “And then in the second campaign, due to the election theft by the Biden team, they did not cheat just on him; they cheated on the rest of the world. And we were really glad to see him coming back to power.”

For Dodik, Trump’s return has therefore coincided with the lifting of American sanctions, the July departure of Christian Schmidt — former international high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina — and now another sweeping electoral victory for Dodik’s political movement.

Dodik has gone further than simply praising Trump. He has explicitly called on the president to play a central role in determining Republika Srpska’s political future.