PDP candidate allegedly assaulted by RS President Dodik

The video shows the moment Stanivukovic said he was allegedly assaulted by Dodik, who then tried to take his smartphone away from him.

"There, the president just hit me and threw my phone away. There, they are telling me to go away," Party of Democratic Progress' candidate for the municipal council in Banjaluka Drasko Stanivukovic said while recording his video.

He also said that he came to Celinac, northern Bosnia, where the alleged assault took place, to lay down the cornerstone for a bridge that is built there.

During a press conference in Banja Luka, attended by representatives of the PDP, Stanivuković said that he was in the company of two of his friends and that they had no intention of attacking anyone, but that they wanted to do a performance with which to point out that everyone has the right to come to this event in Celinac.

He added that after the RS President finished his speech, he allegedly came up to him, cursing, hitting his smartphone and hitting him in the shoulder.

"His security started insulting me, cursing and squeezing my arm, they wanted to break my phone and then a number of people surrounded me and started pushing me," Stanivukovic noted.

Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency member and member of the PDP Mladen Ivanic said he expects Dodik to apologize to Stanivukovic.

PDP leader Branislav Borenovic stressed that everyone knows Stanivukovic’s "performances" and that he cannot believe that "the regime attacked him."

On the opposite side of Banjaluka, RS President Milorad Dodik and RS Prime Minister Zeljka Cvijanovic held their own press conference where Dodik said the incident was "the opposition’s attempt to stage an attack, but no such thing ever happened because no one had hit him."

Cvijanovic called the incident "the ultimate rotting phase of the rotten opposition bloc."