According to the first preliminary results of the Commission for the referendum in Republika Srpska (RS), 99.8 percent of citizens voted for January 9 to be celebrated as the Day of RS.
President of the Commission Sinisa Karan said 30.6 percent of votes has been counted so far and 99.8 percent of citizens supported the idea that January 9 remains the Day of RS.
Karan said that the turnout in the referendum was between 56 and 60 percent.
There were no incidents reported during the referendum.
Bosnian Serbs voted today in a referendum over a disputed national holiday, defying Bosnia's highest court and Western pressure to call off a process that risks stoking ethnic tensions in the divided Balkan country.
The referendum, on whether to mark January 9 as „Republika Srpska Day“, was the first since a 1992 plebiscite on secession from then-Yugoslavia that ignited three years war in which 100,000 were killed.
Polling stations across the Bosnian Serb-dominated region opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 7 p.m.
The Sarajevo-based Constitutional Court has ruled that the holiday would be illegal because it coincides with a Serbian Orthodox Christian holiday and so discriminates against Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats living in RS. The court also banned the referendum.
