Serbia’s President on Saturday said that Sandjak, Serbia’s southwestern region populated by many Bosniaks, is not even similar to Republika Srpska (RS), Bosnia’s Serb-dominated part. The former does not exist in Serbia’s Constitution, while the latter is guaranteed by Bosnia’s Constitution, he said.
The comment was made as a response to statements that certain candidates for the Bosniak and Croat seats in Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency made.
“This is not the Ottoman Empire,” Vucic said, explaining that Sandjak is nowhere to be found in Serbia’s Constitution. “Does that mean that you would so easily breach the Constitution of Serbia, but you are so sensitive when someone else would, as I have never done, think that the Constitution of Bosnia or the Dayton Peace Agreement should be breached?”
The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement ended the war in Bosnia and part of it, Annexe IV, is Bosnia’s Constitution which says that the country is divided into two semi-autonomous entities – Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which despite its name is, in fact, just another entity.
“I don’t want to speak about the size or the number of people, but just about the constitutional legal perspective. But, when elections are over, there will be time to talk about this,” he said.
Vucic said that two candidates for Bosnia’s Presidency, a Bosniak and a Croat, but both of whom are mostly supported by Bosniaks, made a parallel between Sandjak and Republika Srpska after Vucic said that Serbia loves the RS and respects its integrity.
When he spoke about the Croat candidate, Vucic referred to Zeljko Komsic. The main Croat ethnic parties in the country accused him of colluding with Bosniaks and consider him an illegitimate representative of the Croat people in Bosnia.
Vucic pointed this out, predicting that this person will probably be the Croat Presidency member and that Bosniaks will elect him.
“But this is in accordance with their constitution and that is fine, I don’t want to get involved in that,” he said.
Vucic said that the candidates, responding to his statement that he “loves Republika Srpska,” said that they love Sandjak and asked Vucic whether he would allow for schools in that region to be named after Bosnia and Herzegovina. The statement refers to Serbia’s support for opening a school in the RS named “Serbia”.
Vucic said he would have no problem with that.
“But they have not built one, neither a school nor a kindergarten. We and friends we have brought there from the UAE and other places have built most of them,” he said.
“I would love it if they would build schools and kindergartens here, you have no idea how happy I would be and I would thank them for every one of them, I would attend the opening of a school named Bosnia and Herzegovina, I have no problem with that,” he said.
