KOVAČEVIĆ: SRPSKA EXISTED EVEN BEFORE DAYTON; WE WILL PRESERVE OUR RIGHTS, AND NO ONE WILL STOP US IN THAT

BANJA LUKA, FEBRUARY 3 /SRNA/ - Republika Srpska existed even before the Dayton Agreement; we will preserve our rights and autonomy, and no one will stop us in that, said Radovan Kovačević, a Serb member of the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH.

Kovačević emphasized that Republika Srpska is free and will remain free within Dayton’s BiH. “If people are not willing to discuss this and to return to Republika Srpska what belongs to it under the Constitution and the Dayton Agreement, then it is entirely logical that Republika Srpska will seek alternative solutions and will preserve its status, autonomy, and rights, and in that, we will not be stopped by players far more serious than Igor Crnadak and Branislav Borenović,” Kovačević told RTRS. Kovačević said that the timing of the statements from the Republika Srpska opposition is interesting. “Whenever someone from the Republika Srpska leadership responds to all these attacks on Srpska in a way that shows that it will find a way to regulate its status, voices like Crnadak, Borenović, or Vukanović always appear, defeatist voices from Republika Srpska, voices of Sarajevo within Republika Srpska, voices of Schmidt within Republika Srpska, to tell us that Republika Srpska has no right to be anything other than what they like to call a ‘BiH entity,’” said Kovačević, who is also the SNSD spokesperson. According to him, Republika Srpska existed even before Dayton, and that is the essential point. “And that is exactly what we have been insisting on,” Kovačević stated. He stressed that without the Dayton Agreement, there would be no BiH, but, as he emphasized, Sarajevo and all those defeatists from Republika Srpska, acting on instructions from Sarajevo, such as Crnadak, Borenović, and others, are always quick to claim that without Dayton, there would be no Republika Srpska. “But who negotiated all those years in Dayton and ultimately articulated that position and agreed to the BiH that exists today?” Kovačević explained. He emphasized that it is also interesting that people like Crnadak and Borenović have never criticized Christian Schmidt or political Sarajevo for persistently undermining the Dayton Agreement. “But how could they, when their current leader, Draško Stanivuković, received Christian Schmidt with the highest honors in Banja Luka, even shaming both Banja Luka and Republika Srpska by showing him the memorial to the 12 Banja Luka babies,” Kovačević said. But how could they, he added, when their former leader Mladen Ivanić boasted that, following orders from Sarajevo, he was the one who abolished the Army of Republika Srpska, the intelligence agency, and transferred the authority over indirect taxes to BiH, introducing a principle that had not existed before, that all collected funds first go to BiH, and only then does Republika Srpska receive what remains. “Until then, Republika Srpska and the Federation of BiH would agree on what was needed, and only according to that agreement would funds be allocated to BiH institutions if they wished,” Kovačević recalled. He emphasized that such people are extremely satisfied with this submissive stance, in which Republika Srpska is always kept constrained and can exist only as some kind of entity within BiH.