KOVAČEVIĆ: BiH CEC IS NOTHING MORE THAN TOOL FOR PRESSURE AGAINST REPUBLIKA SRPSKA

BANJA LUKA, DECEMBER 15 /SRNA/ – SNSD spokesperson Radovan Kovačević said that the Central Election Commission /CEC/ of BiH is nothing more than a political tool used to exert pressure on Republika Srpska and to humiliate it.

Speaking at a press conference in Banja Luka, Kovačević said that only in BiH does it take a full month to count the results of snap elections in Republika Srpska, in which just over 400,000 voters took part. “They have been counting votes from our Republika Srpska in Sarajevo for a month and in the end they do not even know what they have counted. That shows who we are dealing with. This keeps repeating from one election cycle to another,” Kovačević said. According to him, the difference between the candidates was, as SNSD stated on election night, around 9,000 votes. “They rechecked 23,000 votes, and only those votes their superiors told them to check, namely the opposition parties from Republika Srpska. They verified only the polling stations where the SDS candidate Branko Blanuša lost,” Kovačević said. This, he added, is the concept of the opposition in Republika Srpska when it comes to conducting elections. “You go to elections, and when you lose, you refuse to recognize any result where you lost, while recognizing only the polling stations where you won. That is how they counted, as if presidents of school classes were being elected in classrooms, not the President of Republika Srpska,” Kovačević said. According to him, this is why from one election cycle to the next opposition candidates Vukota Govedarica, Jelena Trivić, and now Blanuša come out claiming victory, even though they are in fact the losers. Kovačević said that after the recount of 23,000 votes, the difference between the candidates changed by only one percent, which he described as a statistical error. “There were 2,164 polling stations in Republika Srpska, the CEC appointed the presidents of polling boards at all of them, and not a single polling board president raised an objection regarding the regularity of the elections,” Kovačević said. He added that more than 4,500 observers were registered at the elections, and that a total of ten complaints were filed, relating to fewer than ten polling stations. “How is it possible that election losers in every election cycle are unable to accept that the people are telling them they are not wanted, and that their only response every time is a demand to annul elections at all polling stations where they lost?” Kovačević asked. He recalled that Republika Srpska did not request these elections, but that they were demanded by Sarajevo and Christian Schmidt, along with their collaborators in Republika Srpska, representatives of the opposition. “That is why only 443,000 voters from Republika Srpska turned out for these elections,” Kovačević said, recalling the low turnout in the 2007 snap elections following the death of Republika Srpska President Milan Jelić. Kovačević said that SNSD candidate Siniša Karan won around 220,000 votes, noting that in the 2007 elections SNSD candidate Rajko Kuzmanović won 168,000 votes. “After that, everyone said we had achieved a catastrophic result, yet in the 2008 local elections we went from 15 mayors to 41,” Kovačević said. He added that in 2010 SNSD then won convincingly in the elections for President of Republika Srpska and the Serb member of the Presidency, as well as for the National Assembly of Republika Srpska and the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH. “So the time of SNSD and Milorad Dodik is still ahead, because that is the will of the people of Republika Srpska,” Kovačević said.