The Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina announced the preliminary results of the early elections for the President of the Republic of Srpska. Based on these results, the new president of RS is Siniša Karan from SNSD.
Siniša Karan (SNSD) won 200,116 thousand votes or 50.89 percent of votes, and Branko Blanuša (SDS) won 188,010 thousand votes or 47.8 percent of votes.
92.79 percent of polling stations were counted.
Earlier, the election headquarters of the SNSD in Banja Luka, headed by party leader Milorad Dodik, declared Karan the winner.
Karan had the broad support of the coalition partners who together with his party form the government in the RS, and he will remain in the chair of the president until the General Elections, which will be held in October next year.
Karan spent the election campaign in the shadow of party leader Milorad Dodik, who was the star of every forum.
In his statements, he did not hide that “the people’s president will continue to be Milorad Dodik”, and that he will only continue his policy. In other words, Karan will be remotely in Dodik’s hands.
Siniša Karan has been a member of Milorad Dodik’s close circle for many years, who had to leave the post of entity president after he was sentenced to a year in prison and banned from performing official duties for six years.
Karan has held various positions in the governing structures for years, and is currently the Minister for Science and Technology Development and Higher Education of the RS.
He was under US sanctions because he was part of Milorad Dodik’s “secessionist strike group”, but they were recently lifted.
He was the head of the group that held an unconstitutional referendum on the Day of the RS, and he was also the head of the MUP while central warrants were issued for Dodik, Stevandić and Višković.
Behind Karan is a very interesting biography that shows that he has been professionally connected to the police and intelligence structures for decades. As such, today it is rather self-effacing, but in the background it works on processes important to the ruling structures. He worked from Kupres, via Sarajevo to Banja Luka.
From 1985 to 2008, he worked in the internal affairs bodies as the commander of the Kupres police station, the secretary of the SUP Kupres, the head of the crime department of SJB Centar Sarajevo, the head of the Directorate for Suppression of Crime of the MUP of the Republic of Srpska, the head of criminal investigations of the SIPA and the head of the Financial Intelligence Department of the SIPA.
From 2008, he was employed in the Office of the President of the Republika Srpska, where he performed the duties of an advisor to the president, and from 2009 to 2019, performed the duties of the President’s General Secretary. Since January 2019, he has been performing the duties of the Secretary General of the Government of the RS.
From January 2019 to December 23, 2022, he served as Secretary General of the Government of Republika Srpska, after which he assumed the position of Minister of Internal Affairs, which he held until September 2025, writes Zenith.
