Bosnia on Thursday announced an election to replace the banned president of its Serb entity, who has refused to step down after defying the international envoy overseeing the postwar peace agreement.
Speaking at a news conference in Sarajevo, the head of Bosnia's electoral commission, Irena Hadziabdic, said an early presidential election for the Republika Srpska (RS) statelet would be held on Nov. 23.
It is the latest development in one of the country's worst political crises since its split from Yugoslavia triggered a war that ended 30 years ago.
Early this month, RS president Milorad Dodik was stripped of office and banned from politics for six years by a court for flouting decisions made by the international envoy.
"These elections are meaningless and will not take place in the RS," the 66-year-old leader told reporters in Banja Luka, the capital of the Serbian entity, after the announcement.
"I'm not threatening violence, but I believe people will take to the streets and demonstrate," he said.
He has instead slated a referendum on his leadership for Oct. 25 – the first of several polls he plans to hold.
Bosnia's 1992-1995 conflict left nearly 100,000 people dead and divided the country into two largely autonomous entities, the Serb-majority RS and Croat-Bosniak Federation.
Both are held together by a weak central government and overseen by an internationally backed envoy, who has the power to impose and cancel laws.
Dodik has, during his almost two decades in power, routinely challenged the envoy and regularly talks of splitting the RS from Bosnia through an independence vote.
Dodik has been the target of sanctions from the United States and Britain for undermining the peace deal and Bosnia's stability.
However, he remains deeply entrenched in power.
The current crisis began earlier this year when Bosnia's courts found him guilty of failing to comply with the orders of the current envoy, Christian Schmidt.
Dodik retaliated with a series of controversial laws, which were later struck down by the courts, including one that barred Bosnian federal police and the judiciary from RS.
