No decisions or threats will keep him from promoting the interests of the country’s Bosnian Serb semi-autonomous region, the new Bosnian Serb member of Bosnia’s Presidency said after his cabinet reported on Tuesday that it received death threats.
Milorad Dodik, the hardline leader of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), which has been in power in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated semi-autonomous Republika Srpska (RS) entity for more than a decade, has been elected in October to the state Presidency.
The institution is composed of three members, each representing one of the ethnic majorities living in the country – Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs.
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After he was inaugurated last week, Dodik, who has been advocating for the RS to secede from Bosnia for years and join neighbouring Serbia, immediately put up the flag of Republika Srpska in front of his office in the Presidency, declared he does not like Bosnia and that he feels Serbia is his homeland and insisted that policemen from Republika Srpska guard him and not state police. He distrusts state institutions, he said.
The RS flag was removed overnight, and the head of the state agency for coordination of police bodies within the country, Mirsad Vilic, said only state-level police can carry arms within the Presidency building.
On Tuesday, Dodik’s cabinet reported that someone had called and threatened Dodik and his staff.
“Those in Sarajevo who say that no police agency except for the directorate can bring arms into the building of Bosnia’s Presidency are suggesting that I should be guarded by the same people who never prevented the violence and attempted murder of Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic in Srebrenica,” Dodik said on Tuesday.
He was referring to the incident that occurred during the 2015 commemoration of the Srebrenica genocide, where unknown individuals threw rocks at the Serbian President, one of which struck him in the face.
“I don’t want to be someone’s moving target,” Dodik said.
“The only police agency I trust is the police of Republika Srpska, and only they can care for my security where I go,” he added.
