GOGANOVIĆ TO HELEZ: NO BiH WITHOUT ENTITY VOTING

ISTOČNO SARAJEVO, AUGUST 20 /SRNA/ - When Zukan Helez says that decisions on BiH should be made by "citizens", it is clear that by this he means official Sarajevo and a concept in which one people would make decisions on behalf of the other two, Deputy Minister of Defence in the Council of Ministers Aleksandar Goganović stresses, noting that such a BiH was not agreed in Dayton and will not exist.

"They can only dream of abolishing entity voting. Its abolition would open the door to outvoting and imposing the political will of one people on the others. It was precisely outvoting and unilateral decisions that were part of the political crisis that led us into tragic conflicts at the beginning of the 1990s," Goganović told SRNA, asking whether the goal of official Sarajevo is to return us to such an atmosphere and at whose order Helez wants to jeopardize peace and stability in BiH.

Reacting to Helez's statement in which, speaking about possible constitutional reforms, he advocated abolishing entity voting in the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, arguing that MPs should make decisions on the basis of a democratic majority, Goganović stressed that Republika Srpska acquired its constitutional position through the Dayton Peace Agreement, reached with strong international mediation and the support of the world's major powers at the time.

"From today's perspective, it is clear that the Dayton was the result of a major compromise, but also one of the most significant foreign-policy successes of the United States in this part of the world. The mechanisms for protecting the rights of the constituent peoples were not included in the Dayton by accident – they were the result of the strategic thinking of the authors of the Dayton Accords, with the aim of preventing outvoting, domination and new crises," Goganović pointed out.

He said that Republika Srpska remains committed to peace, stability and security, and that BiH can survive only on the basis of an agreement between the two entities and three constituent peoples, while anything else would be a dangerous political adventure.