More than 1 million voters of the Bosnian Serb-controlled entity Republika Srpska are eligible to vote for a new president of their mini-state on Sunday, election authorities said.
Polling stations opened at 7:00 a.m. local time (0600 GMT) and were to close 12 hours later. The first preliminary results are expected to be announced at midnight.
No opinion polls have been conducted on the 10 candidates for the largely ceremonial post, but Rajko Kuzmanovic is the front-runner to succeed the late president Milan Jelic, who died of a heart attack on Sept. 30, less than a year after being elected.
Kuzmanovic, 76, enjoys the support of the most powerful man in the Serb entity, Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, the head of Kuzmanovic's Alliance of Independent Social Democrats. The party holds all key functions in the Bosnian Serb entity as well as many positions in the central government.
Kuzmanovic's closest rival is the 33-year-old Ognjen Tadic fromthe nationalist Serb Democratic Party, which was founded by fugitive war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic. The youngest candidate is expected to get support from younger voters.
Under the peace agreement that ended the three and a half years of ethnic fighting in 1995, Bosnia-Herzegovina consists of the Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat Federation. Each of the two semi-independent entities has its own president, government, parliament and police. The two are linked by a weak central government, a parliament and a three-member presidency.
Since 1995, almost all the ethnically divided structures of government have been merged, including the army, in which Serbs, Muslim Bosnians and Croats serve together. Bosnian Serbs held out for years against giving up their separate police force, fearing it might lead to the loss of their separate entity within the country.
Last month, however, its leaders agreed to a compromise deal, which foresees an eventual merger of police, paving the way for initialing a pre-membership agreement on Tuesday with the European Union.
Source:Xinhua
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