Komšić: If We Change the Constitution, I Will Withdraw My Candidacy for the Presidency

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - Democratic Front leader Željko Komšić said during an appearance on TV1 that he would withdraw from the race for the BiH Presidency if changes were made to the BiH Constitution.

When asked „is there anything that can deter you from running“ Komšić replied that there is.

- There is. If we change the Constitution and accept everything that was written regarding the House of Peoples and the BiH Presidency in line with the April package. So, those provisions concerning the role of the House of Peoples, the method of its election and functioning, and the election of the BiH Presidency in the representative body at the BiH level, I am ready to say: It's over, I am completely withdrawing. This option exists. But it must be exactly what is written in the April package from the first to the last letter regarding the House of Peoples and the election of the BiH Presidency, or, as I repeated the other day to representatives of the international community: If you don't want that, fine.

I would then completely withdraw from political life so that I no longer bother anyone. Then I would not feel the need to be in the political arena, which I am fed up with. There is another option: then change the Constitution and elect one president in Parliament. Let there be one, let him be elected in Parliament. I don't care who it will be. In this struggle with the ethnic concept and what they want to do with BiH, and what was done in 1994, 95, 96, I will not back down. I can only back down when I see that the people reject me.

Komšić also said that the claims of those who say that his candidacy directly benefits Dragan Čović are not true.

- That kind of sentence is contradictory in itself. How am I helping him by throwing him out of the BiH Presidency? I cannot grasp that logic. There are also well-intentioned proposals. How to explain to those people that no matter what we do, Čović will go all the way. There is no concession here in Sarajevo that will deter him from what he has planned. The only thing you can do is to defeat him politically and put him in his place – said Komšić.