President Milanović: My Work and Positions Show that I Advocate Bosnia and Herzegovina the Way it is, and the Word ‘Entity’ is Being Used Incorrectly
The President of the Republic Zoran Milanović attended the official opening of a glamping village at the Terme Tuhelj spa resort, after which he took questions from members of the press.
The President commented on his statement given in an interview to the RTCG broadcaster during his visit to Montenegro, in which he spoke about relations in the region and referred to Bosnia and Herzegovina as “a state of three entities”.
He said that his statement on the three entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina was “a minor slip of the tongue” and added that the very word ‘entity’ was a wrong name for how the country was organised territorially. “I believe that my work, my speeches, my positions mostly show that I advocate Bosnia and Herzegovina the way it is, as a guarantor of some sort of stability,” President Milanović told the press, stressing that the fundamental problem was the use of the term ‘entity’.
“I am actually glad that this minor slip of the tongue has happened, I did say three entities. This is a message to all those to whom Bosnia and Herzegovina is a supreme value, a united Bosnia and Herzegovina, some would say even a unitary B-H – with which many people in B-H do not agree – the term ‘entity’ was imposed, it was made up at the time when the Dayton peace agreement was signed, and it is, in fact, entirely wrong,” President Milanović added.
“The (country’s) two units of territorial organisation… are federal units, they are not entities,” President Milanović said, adding that he “didn’t have ill intentions”. “The word entity should be thrown out precisely by those who do not want to give these entities special power and uniqueness, that is, distinctiveness – and being unique, detached, that is, distanced from something is characteristic of an entity. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, under its constitution, there are three key ethnic entities, the Bosniaks, Serbs and the Croats,” President Milanović said, noting that the term ‘entity’, used to describe the country’s two units of territorial organisation, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, was misapplied.
Furthermore, in his reply to reporters’ other questions President Milanović said that the intentions of the organisers of the Zadar tennis tournament were not bad. “There was a wish to set life in motion in Croatia and attract people, but unfortunately those plans went awry,” President Milanović pointed out, adding that “now people will not come to Croatia,” but he also expressed hope they would come later.
Commenting on the upcoming parliamentary election, the President of the Republic said that he believed they would be held “in a normal atmosphere, as much as that it possible.” “Elections are a less aggressive event than a concert or a party in Zadar,” he said, adding that elections last one day and can be extended for an hour, if necessary.
President Milanović also commented on the physical contact between Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and infected tennis player Novak Đoković, and journalists asked him if Mr. Plenković needed to self-isolate because of that.
“Usually people wash their hands. Even before the epidemic, we washed our hands. And since you are asking me about handshakes, I think that nobody in Croatia shook hands more in the last ten years than I have. You have to be disciplined, handshaking is not the problem. Handshaking, if hands are washed, is not the problem. This is going to be a great headline, we’re talking about handwashing – we’ve come to the point of discussing such banal things. The problem with hands is that you can infect yourself. Take care of yourself, the country can’t do that for you,” President Milanović commented on shaking hands in the campaign and the contact between Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and infected player Novak Đoković.