SARAJEVO (Reuters) -Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic will appoint an interim president, its parliament said on Friday, the first time it has officially acknowledged that former President Milorad Dodik will step aside after a state court banned him from politics.
The parliament will vote to appoint the president on Saturday. Whoever wins will only hold the position for one month until new presidential elections are held in the Serb Republic on November 23.
The state court sentenced Moscow-backed Dodik in February to a year in jail or pay a fine, and banned him from political activity for six years for defying orders of an international peace envoy put in place to stop the country falling back into ethnic violence.
Bosnia and Herzegovina comprises the Serb Republic and a federation shared by Bosniaks and Croats under the Dayton peace accords that ended a 1992-95 conflict which killed about 100,000 people and displaced around 2 million.
Dodik, a pro-Russian nationalist who wants to secede the Serb Republic and join Serbia, had refused to step down and continued to perform duties and travel abroad in the capacity of president. He is appealing the court’s verdict at the constitutional court.
It is not clear why the parliament wants to appoint an acting president for just a month when there are two vice-presidents in place to perform presidential duties. The parliament and Dodik’s cabinet did not respond to requests for comment.
Unconfirmed reports in local media named Zeljka Cvijanovic, the Serb member of the state tripartite presidency, as a candidate for the interim job. However, legal experts said that would violate the constitution under which a person holding an executive office cannot be nominated for another executive office.
In the case that Cvijanovic is elected, the work of the state presidency would be blocked until her replacement is found, according to the constitution.
Cvijanovic did not respond to a request for comment.
Dodik has nominated the region’s government minister Sinisa Karan as his ruling SNSD party’s (Alliance of Independent Social Democrats) candidate to become president in the November vote.
(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Susan Fenton)
