Opposition parties in Republika Srpska today criticized the protest rallies held on the inter-entity line and announced their “open-air parliament”.
The meetings were called for because the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina filed an indictment against the President of the RS Milorad Dodik for not implementing the decisions of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The leaders of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) Milan Miličević said at a joint press conference of the opposition after the meeting in Banja Luka that “everyone has the right to express their opinion in accordance with the law”, but that he “will not defend the cult of the leader”.
“I will not allow myself to defend the cult of personality or the cult of the leader, it is a freak policy that has always cost us. I have been on the inter-entity lines when I needed to, and not just me,” he said.
The president of the Movement for Justice and Order, Nebojša Vukanović, condemned the call by the authorities to block roads at four locations on the inter-entity line, stating that this raises inter-ethnic tensions and puts people from the RS working in the Federation of BiH in danger, and such, as he said, , more than ten thousand.
The president of the People’s Front (NF), Jelena Trivić, assessed that the trial against Dodik before the state judiciary is “his personal matter”.
“He himself caused the crises he fell into, the people must not drag him along, this is not an attack on the institution of the president of the RS, but on Dodik personally. It is not Milorad Republika,” she emphasized.
The opposition announced to journalists that on Thursday, September 7, they will hold an “open parliament” in Banja Luka due to the refusal of the ruling coalition in the RS to hold a special parliamentary session due to non-implementation of the conclusions of the entity’s National Assembly.
The leaders of the SDS, the Party of Democratic Progress (PDP), the Movement for Justice and Order have accused the ruling Union of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) of Milorad Dodik of violating the conclusions of the RS National Assembly.
At the press conference, they assessed that the violation of the NSRS conclusions by the authorities in Sarajevo was “treason”.
They stated that the ruling coalition, led by the SNSD, violated the conclusions of the Parliament of the RS, because in the Council of Ministers of BiH and the State Parliament it voted for some of the laws from the European agenda, and that before that the law on the Constitutional Court of BiH was not adopted, which would ended the mandate of foreign judges in that court, as it was defined by the conclusions.
“We invite citizens to state their proposals and demands. We are not a hypnotized crowd, nor do we call people to just listen to us, that’s what the other side does. I want people who think freely,” said SDS President Milan Miličević.
PDP President Branislav Borenović stated that the ruling coalition in the BiH Council of Ministers was “playing a game” – that Dodik and the SNSD “issued the conclusions of the NSRS”.
We need to “make clear who is the believer and who is the unbeliever, to stop the collapse of the largest legislative body of the Republika Srpska”, Borenović said.
The president of the Movement for Justice and Order, Nebojša Vukanović, said that the opposition “must not be within the framework that the government wants to impose on it”.
NF President Jelena Trivić assessed that the government in RS “trampled the institutions”, stating that “for the regime there are only buildings, armchairs, ministers…” who “only know what personal interests are and we should not build anything with them”.
