Are citizens in Republika Srpska voting for Dodik or for Putin?

This year's pre-election political campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the dirtiest since the Dayton Agreement, many political analysts have assessed, writes the BiH news agency Patria (NAP).

The ruling political elite is aware that citizens of all three nations in the country are eager for change and progress, and that their political seats have been seriously shaken after 20 years of ruling the country.

One analyst noted that the most influential politicians in the country, or at least those who have been until now, have realized that they can only win citizens' votes in the October elections if they "hit" their emotions. Thus, Dragan Čović, the leader of the HDZ, is talking more than ever about the endangerment of the Croatian people in BiH, even though he himself is aware that those from this nation might be the least represented among the unemployed in all of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Bakir Izetbegović is aware that he can only gain votes by convincing Bosniaks that no one should touch Bosnia and Herzegovina as long as Turkey exists, and as long as Erdoğan is in Turkey, so he uses every opportunity to show the public that the President of Turkey is his great friend.

Milorad Dodik uses the same methods. If Putin doesn't bring him victory in Republika Srpska, nothing else will. Thus, from the very first day of the election campaign in this entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, SNSD billboards featuring photos of Dodik and Russian President Vladimir Putin have appeared.

In the October elections, citizens in RS will vote for the party whose posters feature Putin, without even thinking about Dodik while in the voting booths, but Dodik will thus indirectly regain power in Republika Srpska, and Putin will probably never even know that he could have been the president of Republika Srpska, writes NAP.