Kremic's response to Covic and Ivanic: It is not up to politicians to decide

Neither Dragan Covic nor Mladen Ivanic and Milorad Dodik and any other politician in this country could change the decision of Velimir Jukic, Director of Agency for Statistics to start publishing results of the Census from 2013 on 1 July.

Director of Agency for Statistics FBiH Emir Kremic said to Patria that even Jukic himself could not change or revoke his decision.

- Velimir Jukic is Director of the Agency. He is a self-sufficient body and he made a decision that is in accordance with the recommendations of IMO. The results will be published on 1 July. Directors of statistics agencies, both the state and entity levels are accountable to the law every four years, and Covic, Ivanic and other politicians are accountable to voters every four years, Kremic says.

There are no political agreements among coalition leaders at the state level about changes to the law that Covic keeps referring to, could influence the work of BH Statistics Agency or Jukic's decision.

- Directors are not accountable to the politicians, and they are not obliged to report to them. We are only obliged by the law, Kremic holds.

In the case someone wants to revoke Jukic's decision, he can do so by submitting an appeal to the Constitutional Court of BiH. According to the BH Constitutions, only members of Presidency, Chairman of Council of Ministers and ¼ of delegates at House of Representatives of BH Parliament have a right to do so.

Following his meeting with Ivanic in Banja Luka, Covic stated for the press that he understood positions of Republika Srpska presented at their National Assembly.

- We reached a political agreement of all parties at BH level to introduce changes to the law which will enable us to extend the deadline for releasing the census results until the end of 2016 so as to avoid burdening pre-election cycle in BiH. Unfortunately, the agreement has not been respected, Covic said adding that it is not fair to say that he knew about Jukic's decision.

- No doubt that a mistake was made. We did not respect the agreement. Now we have to see how to get out of the situation. I didn't know about the decision, Covic said.

President of the Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik presented the positions of NSRS to the German ambassador to BiH Christian Helbach and Chief of EU Delegation Gunnar Wigemark.

- I reiterated that the decision of Director of BH Statistics Agency Velimir Jukic of 18 May is unacceptable to the Republika Srpska. I told them that the position of NSRS is that Serb representatives will withdraw from the Central Census Committee and BH Statistics Agency. That way, no legitimacy will be given to the work of those institutions unless Jukic's decision is revoked and unless a consensus on methodology is reached, Dodik said to the press.

In spite of the warning that IMO and EU cannot recognize results of the census of only one entity, Dodik said that they will consider a possibility for RS to adopt its own legislation and release the census results.  

- Should that prove impossible, we will carry out a census in the RS on our own and release the results, Dodik said despite clear messages from Brussels.