​Govedarica is not serious and Ivanic is always running for some office  

Prime Minister of the Republic of Srpska and SNSD Candidate for the President of the Republic of Srpska Zeljka Cvijanovic in an interview with vijesti.ba speaks openly about her candidacy, other competitors, the opposition, her chances to win, achievements and obstacles, NATO and BiH path to the EU, British Intelligence Officers and the Russian influence, David Dragicevic case, etc.

Reporter: Nevena Cosic

- President of the RS and of SNSD, Milorad Dodik expects a major victory at all levels and says he needs You as the RS President to that end and the people united in pursuing the moto "RS first". Was the RS first for SNSD in the past period?

CVIJANOVIC: Absolutely, this is the political framework for all our actions and shall remain so. "Republic of Srpska first"is more than a moto, it is the political goal we puruse. We need this kind of unity and strong connection between the Serb Member of BiH Presidency and the President of the Republic of Srpska. Had we had that in the past four years, we would have had better coordination between the institions and representatives from the Republic of Srpska in BiH institutions. Unfortunately, the Coalition for Change used their positions to teach the institutions of Republic of Srpska a lesson because the authorities in Banja Luka were not up to their liking. They are not up to the task they perform. Nevertheless, despite the obstructions from the BiH level and efforts of those political parties to hinder the work of the RS institutions, namely the National Assembly of RS, we had a record macroeconomic figures and also managed to preserve the functionality and efficiency of our institutions and overall financial stability.    

- You say you will not play modest and pretend you do not expect the support in the race for the office of the RS President. What can you bring to the citizens until October 7 and what are your advantages in relation to your major opponent, Vukota Govedarica? Critics say that people in the RS are dissatisfied and that you cannot offer anything new to them.

CVIJANOVIC: My arguments are the results achieved under almost impossible circumstances as well as my attitude toward the institutions and the people of the Republic of Srpska. My vision is to see Republic of Srpska being stronger and stronger and well protecteded in terms of its constitutional status and jurisdiction, economically prosperous and well connected with Serbia with a clear position towards Sarajevo but also toward the foreigners who are only causing mess.

As for Vukota Govedarica, I do not intend to deal specifically with him. He talks demagogy and his CV is shallow. He says he is not experienced enough to go to Sarajevo, so he is running for the President of the Republic. This statement is worrying in many ways. You must be politically illiterate to say you run for such an important function but you are inexperienced. It also shows that his political concept implies that Sarajevo is superior to Banja Luka.

My concept implies that the Republic of Srpska decides in its institutions on all matters that concern its constitutional jurisdiction and protects its interests in Sarajevo by a clear attitude. In fact, when I look more closely at our candidacies, I say we do not compete at all because as I worked, he was fooling around in front of the cameras. His great political endeavor is to win the "helpless" assembly desk and mine is to adopt the laws that citizens expect from us.

We have a different view about institutions. Being the President of the Republic is a serious matter. You cannot promise to be the President of all citizens while as the President of the largest opposition party you refuse to go to every meeting on any important issue convened by the President of the Republic. But you go to a meeting convened by Bakir Izetbegovic, who neither represents nor presides the Presidency of BiH, nor is he elected in the Republic of Srpska. That is just not serious.

- You are managing the Government of the RS for more than five years. What would you describe as a "well-done job," and are there any problems and challenges that you will leave behind to the future RS Government?

CVIJANOVIC: We have provided treasury payment of pensions and hence their full regularity and almost a 20% increase. We did not act like the former Government run by Mladen Ivanić who used to pay a 60% of the pension to pensioners. We have increased the agrarian budget from 60 to 71 million BAM and pay the agricultural incentives regularly which is not the case in the neighboring countries. We have introduced a whole range of new rights for vulnerable social groups; for example, a monthly maternity allowance for unemployed mothers of new born babies in the amount of BAM 405 which we also do not have anywhere else. In addition to the existing rights in the area of veterans' and invalids protection, we introduced a monthly compensation in the amount of the lowest pension for our demobilized soldiers who are 65 years of age, but do not have 15 years of service. For the first time we introduced personal disability benefits for civilian invalids, we also established legal rights for women victims of war. We have adopted a set of laws that ensure that every public and private sector worker receives a salary increase of BAM 30 and those with the lowest salaries would get an increase of about 45 and 50. I have not noticed that any single Government in the region did it in one step ensuring increase for all people employed.

We are finishing the reconstruction of the University-Clinical Center in Banja Luka and the hospital in East Sarajevo; the new hospital in Bijeljina has already been built and the construction of a hospital in Doboj is underway. We have more kilometers of highways built than in the Federation of BiH. Within a month or two, the Banja Luka-Doboj highway will be completed and roads from Doboj head toward Bijeljina and Serbia as well as from Banja Luka toward Prijedor and Novi Grad and from East Sarajevo toward Vardište. We are conducting a serious restructuring of the "Railways of the Republic of Srpska" public enterprise and large energy projects are under preparation. In this mandate, we also built several new student dormitories in Banja Luka, East Sarajevo and Foča and created conditions for building few more.

At the moment, we are placing about BAM 120 million in projects nominated by the municipalities across the Republic of Srpska. We have paid some debts in advance. The debt went down from 40% at the beginning of the year to 38.5%. We shall leave a stable budget to the new Government. We would continue working on the education reform and connecting our secondary and higher education with the needs of the labor market as well as innovations in the field of education of adults.

- How do you evaluate the presidential mandate of Milorad Dodik and will your policy be different if you get the citizens trust on October 7?

CVIJANOVIC: President Dodik has provided full unity of the institutions and their joint engagement in preserving the stability of the Republic thanks to which we managed to act in a synchronized manner and to solve both political and economic-financial challenges. The political capital of the Republic is enormous when you have the unity of institutions, articulated political positions and a clear plan of economic measures and precisely that is why we have binding institutions and policies, overcome difficult financial times so that today we talk about higher pensions, incentives, social benefits, numerous infrastructure projects, especially in view of the fact that we can predict future increase and future measures.

As a Prime Minister, I was a part of such a relation and approach and I know that the Republic can progress only with such a unity, so why change that? With President Dodik in BiH Presidency, it would get an additional dimension with regard to protection of the interests of the Republic of Srpska.

- You recently stated that the Alliance for Change (SzP) in this term wanted Sarajevo to be the place which decides on behalf of the RS and not Banja Luka. What do you specifically object to this political bloc? Can you specify several examples of their decisions, which, as you say, were detrimental for the RS?

CVIJANOVIC: I object their ignorance, incompetence, disorientation, bad intention, wrong attitude toward the Republic of Srpska institutions and a million more things. But here's a bit when you're looking for examples. They adopted the Coordination Mechanism "consciously" ignoring the model previously approved by the Government and the National Assembly of the Republic of Srpska which equals treason. They believed more in the proposal given by Denis Zvizdic than the Republika Srpska institutions. They adopted a Reform Agenda that defines the obligations of the entities without any consultation with the RS institutions, although the Agenda referd and defines their obligations in that agenda. Not to mention that they accepted and privatized the Electric Company which is contrary to their publicly proclaimed positions. They have accepted the statements of the Chairman of the Council of Ministers about the need to establish a ministry of agriculture at the level of BiH.

It is unclear whether the Alliance for Change believed that it was necessary or could not say "no" to SDA which shuffled them in the government formula? They put pressure on the Prosecutor's Office of BiH to persecute their political opponents in the RS and then rewarded those who designed and prepared certain things. Not to mention that BAM 750 million intended for the RS had been blocked. What to say about their obstruction with regard to signing of infrastructure projects with China at the summit in Sofia as the latest example? Or what about the fact that despite their frequent participation in international conferences, projects concerning the RS are not but pertaining the Federation of BiH are approved? Talking about the way they deal with problems, we only need to look at the problem with migrants. Their main problem is that they would use all their personal and political energy and the institutional framework of BiH to fight their political opponents but are incapable of doing or solving things. It is the policy that loses.

- Answering to your remark that the opposition can not beat the current government in the RS for years so they call foreigners to help, the opposition say that you lost the race with Mladen Ivanic in 2014 running for the Serbian Member of BiH Presidency and that the Alliance for Change was in ruling coalition at BiH level. What is your answer?

CVIJANOVIC: I have a very simple answer. Those who live in the Republic of Srpska and whose lives it concerns directly, opted for me. Ivanic won with a minimum difference of less than one percent thanks to the votes of those who voted from the FBiH or abroad, that is, live outside the RS. Frankly, for someone like Ivanic who is running for some office "ever since he was born" and maybe even before that, just teasing, means nothing. I had 311,000 votes and this was for the first time in my life that I ran for some office. I hear him bragging that he won the highest number of votes. Well, for someone who is running for an office so many times, no wonder. There, I had the second highest ever won number of votes for that position and I was running for the first time for that office.

As for the participation of the Alliance for Change in the BiH administration level, they are there thanks to the will of Bakir Izetbegovic and not the voters since they received fewer votes than the SNSD and its coalition partners. Although their Sarajevo reign was troublesome for the citizens of the RS, I, as a politician, am pleased that they were there because we could have never shown so well what kind of people they were and what kind of politics it was for they showed through their action.

- President Dodik said recently in an interview with Vijesti.ba, inter alias, that the biggest problem of relations in BiH lied in the inappropriate participation of foreigners in the devastation of the constitutional order of this country and that it could survive exclusively on the internal agreement. On the other hand, SNSD is labeled as a destabilizing factor in certain political circles in BiH. Do you believe in the possibility of reaching an agreement within BiH for the next four years bearing in mind the turbulent political situation? If SNSD gets the opportunity to be a part of the parliamentary majority at the level of BiH and you the President of the RS, what can you do to make it work?

CVIJANOVIC: BiH can progress only if it is based on the reality, not on the imagination. The foreigners are slowing it down by allegedly guarding it but they are crippling its sovereignty and its potential for internal dialogue. For them to think that they would make the state function by creating the obedient is ridiculous. BiH can be preserved only by realistic fact finding, mutual respect and tolerance and whether this will happen does not depend on one side only. I am not an optimist seeing the persistent imposition of guilt, the prosecution of one and glorification of the other side. As for my position, as a Prime Minister, I have shown that cooperation was possible.

- The European Commission announced it would provide an opinion on the BiH responses to the European Commission Questionnaire. How do you see European prospects?

CVIJANOVIC: A lot of time has been lost because they did not respect the reality as I mentioned earlier. SzP's officials currently in power in Sarajevo have all paraded and promised a quick trip to Brussels. That's ridiculous. And then, for every failure and every lack of expertise, they blamed the authorities in Banja Luka. This path is long and demanding, but it can be overcome if there is a responsible approach and respect for a decentralized structure of BiH and its constitutional jurisdictions.

- NATO integration, following the summit in Brussels, is again in the focus of the political public in BiH. Documents from the period when SNSD was in power at the BiH level show that your party's officials actively participated in the MAP activation. The opposition even claims that the SNSD has just paved the BIH way for this military alliance. From your point of view, has there been a change, or to what extent is SNSD policy consistent with NATO integration?

CVIJANOVIC: If we are talking about a period of ten years ago, I believe that the MAP would be activated if there were no such predatory intentions to seize property in which Sarajevo and part of the international community took part. And then all this later way to membership or non-membership in NATO is quite long, so the people would definitely opt for it. This was the vision of that time, and in the meantime, everything was going on, because of which there are some new realities and general political consensus in the Republika Srpska today that Serbia's policy of military neutrality should be followed. What consistency do you ask? Well, it carries its dilemmas and assessments at any time, and policies are aligned with them.

- In an interview with Vijesti.ba in mid-January this year, you said that the story about alleged Russian influence in the RS was blown out of proportions. Is that your position still? In a recent report on the Western Balkans, the UK Foreign Affairs Parliament Commission noted that Russia supports the RS President for the purpose of destabilizing BiH.

CVIJANOVIC: Of course it is blown out of proprtions. Many are seeking excuses for their failed policies. Our attitude is to cooperate with everyone. Many foreign reports are ordered and persistently trying to problematize the Republic of Srpska and absolutely uncritically treat many serious phenomena that are characteristic of others. That's why I say that all this will be difficult to succeed.

- The RS President revealed the possibility of 40 British soldiers, intelligence officers coming to BiH to interfere in the October elections. The institutions at BiH level do not seem to know anything about it. What about the RS institutions?

CVIJANOVIC: The British Minister spoke about the arrival of British soldiers and that was  published in a distinguished British newspaper claiming they would be used to prevent the Russian influence. I did not hear any British official revoke that statement but they did with regard to those who reported about it in the BiH media. I find that very interesting.

- We will return to the situation in the RS. What's the situation like socially and in your opinion are the figures on the number of young people leaving the country alarming?

CVIJANOVIC: Generally speaking, the financial situation is good, that means the obligations toward budget users are fulfilled. Many of the reforms have produced results and we should continue working on higher incomes – higher pensions, salaries, social benefits and higher employment in continuity as agreed between the Government and our social partners. People who are leaving presents a problem for the whole region and that could be controlled only by creating a better environment and we are working on it.

- In the end of this interview, could you give us your comment on the case of "David Dragičević" and everything that is happening about it?

CVIJANOVIC: As a mother, I sympathize with every parent who has experinced a loss of a child. As a citizen, and especially as the Prime Minister, I expect the truth to be established and competent institutions to do their job honorably and responsibly. I think it is inappropriate to comment on anything else as a politician because many things have gone too far.