The newly elected Bosnian Serb member of the tripartite Presidency said his Bosnian Croat counterpart has a “legitimacy crisis” since he was, for the third time already, elected thanks to Bosniak votes.
Bosnia’s Presidency is composed of three members, each representing one of the ethnic majorities living in the country – Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs. But since the Bosnian and Croat members are elected from the same part of the country, and the Bosniaks are numerically dominant there, Bosnian Croat politicians have been complaining that their newly elected representative in the presidency, left-leaning Democratic Front (DF) leader Zeljko Komsic, was actually not their legitimate representative as he was elected by Bosniaks.
The newly elected Bosnian Serb Presidency member, Milorad Dodik, agrees with them.
Komsic is a pro-Bosnian politician, while Dodik has, during his past mandate as President of the Serb-dominated semi-autonomous entity of Republika Srpska (RS), been advocating the secession of the RS from Bosnia and the annexation of it to neighbouring Serbia.
Komsic recently told a Serbian newspaper that Serbia and Bosnia have a border between them on the eastern Drina river and that Serbia should respect this border.
Commenting that statement, Dodik told the SRNA news agency that he respects the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and which defined the country’s border, but that that border is “a sad fact for all Serbs, including me.”
“That is why we like to say that, for Serbs, Drina is not a border that separates, but a river that connects our people and Komsic knows this very well, as he knows that he cannot do anything about it,” he said.
The Bosnian Serb leader said that Komsic does not have the political strength or the competencies to set any conditions to anybody.
“Serbia is for Republika Srpska a top priority, which is something the Dayton Agreement also takes into account, so I am putting Komsic’s statement into a context of a legitimacy crisis,” Dodik said.
“He is not someone who can give lessons to anybody in Republika Srpska, not to mention Serbia, and he is aware of his own insignificance, that is why he is speaking as he is,” he said of Komsic.
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