Trifunović: Media and public reactions give meaning to senseless statements by BiH politicians

The President of the BiH entity Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, said that the entity "found its Dayton Peace Agreement", after the police announced last night that the original version of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the four-year war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995, was found in the possession of a private individual.

Dodik claims that in Sarajevo, the Dayton Agreement has been manipulated and interpreted in the way they wanted, not as it was written.

Aleksandar Trifunović, editor of the Banja Luka portal Buka, considers such statements by Dodik to be populist. He believes it is completely senseless to expect that the found Dayton Agreement will reveal any new details from the peace agreement that were not previously known.

"It is a serious document, there are several copies of it, and it is impossible for anyone to interpret it as a buffet – taking what suits them and rejecting what doesn't," Trifunović told the Patria agency. He is more interested in how the investigation will be conducted and who will be held responsible for the agreement ending up in someone's drawer.

"How is it possible that such an important document was in the drawer of some driver, and for almost 20 years. These are terrible facts, and if they are overlooked, then that is a problem," says Trifunović. He adds that sometimes it seems to him as if Dodik follows social media and says what people want to hear. He points out that only the media give meaning to such statements.

"The media's reaction to Dodik's statements, which are often senseless, is precisely what gives meaning to those statements. Such statements also come from Bakir Izetbegović and Dragan Čović. They are the masters of senselessness in BiH. The only meaning of these statements is for a Bosniak from Sarajevo or a Croat from Mostar to react to Dodik's statement, or vice versa. Because senseless statements only gain meaning through people's reactions to them. The media should start thinking differently. Not give them so much publicity. That mantra should be repeated constantly," says Trifunović.