Republika Srpska (RS) President Milorad Dodik said today in Jerusalem that there are many similarities between RS and Israel, as well as between him and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"There are many of them. Both our peoples face constant attempts to deny them the right to exist and make their own decisions. Both Prime Minister Netanyahu and I are targeted, not because we did anything wrong, but because we will not give in. When they cannot defeat you in the elections, they try to remove you in other ways," Dodik said in an interview with the JNS news agency, which he published on Iks.
Dodik, who is in Jerusalem attending the International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism, gave his "unwavering support to Israel," which he called "a country whose strength, history and determination he deeply respects."
Asked about the laws adopted by the RS National Assembly, which prohibit the work of some state judicial and police institutions in the territory of that entity after the Court of BiH ruled against it for failing to implement the decisions of the High Representative in BiH, Dodik said that "I will not step down, because only the people have the right to decide who leads them, not foreign judges and staged trials."
"The political court makes political judgments. They are trying to achieve through the judiciary in Sarajevo what they cannot achieve in the elections, to remove Milorad Dodik from politics," he said.
He added that his response is to "go forward, go to Israel, go to friends and everywhere he can defend the interests of the people who elected him."
While Dodik is in Israel, the media in BiH are writing about how he left Bosnia and Herzegovina in a situation where a central arrest warrant was issued for him, because, together with the Speaker of the RS Parliament Nenad Stevandić and the entity Prime Minister Radovan Višković, he did not respond to a summons for questioning on charges that they had attacked the country's constitutional order.
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