Eurasia Press & News
In the political public of Serbia and Republika Srpska, there is speculation that Aleksandar Vučić and people close to the Serbian Progressive Party have begun to support Jelena Trivić, an opposition politician who entered the formation of an option whose name is irresistibly reminiscent of Vučić’s People’s Movement for the State – People’s Front .
Our interlocutors indicate that the president of Serbia has always played on two sides, and that, despite the meeting for Good Friday, relations between Dodik and Vučić have cooled.
Last year, the citizens of Republika Srpska elected a new leadership – the president of Republika Srpska, the Serbian member of the BiH Presidency, as well as deputies in the National Assembly of Republika Srpska.
The opposition stood behind Mirko Šarović as a member of the Presidency and Jelena Trivić as the President of Republika Srpska. Both candidates lost the race – Šarović to Željka Ivanović, Trivić to Dodik.
Trivić still does not accept the election results, and neither does Dodik as president, because the elections, he says, were stolen.
After the election, accusations were made against his party colleague Draško Stanivuković, a member of the Party of Democratic Progress (PDP) and the mayor of Banja Luka, that he was in “symbiosis” with the SNSD president, that is, that he had betrayed the opposition voters. There was also a conflict with the leadership of the PDP, and a few months after the election day – Trivić left the party she was a part of and joined the establishment of a new option – the People’s Front.
Both during the campaign and after it, this politician was followed by stories that she enjoys the support of official Belgrade.
Draško Stanivuković and Jelena Trivić, along with the third member of parliament from Trebinje, the president of the List for Justice and Order, Nebojša Vukanović, represented the backbone of the opposition’s activities for the past four years. Today, Vukanović criticizes Stanivuković, also for the alleged “symbiosis”, which the mayor of Banja Luka denies, but Trivić supports.
Trivić’s movement – namesake and surname of Vučić’s movement for the state
While guesting on the show “Mat” on Banja Luka’s BN television a month ago, Trivić unprovoked began to defend Aleksandar Vučić from Milorad Dodik, that is, from the words of the Dean of the Faculty of Security Sciences from Banja Luka, Predrag Ćeranić, during the forum held in Belgrade – “Serbia is defending itself in Serbia”, which was attended by Dodik himself.
Because of the address in which he asked why Vučić in Brussels did not demand that the Republika Srpska be on the table, when Kosovo is already on it, that is, that these two problems should be solved together, she accused Ćeranić of “perfidiously attacking Vučić”, and all , as she believes, by order of Milorad Dodik – for her, Ćeranić is “Dodik’s megaphone”.
Nebojša Vukanović says that there is an obvious turn in the relationship between Trivić and Vučić.
“I think she has some contacts with people who are originally from the RS and are close to Vučić, so she does it under their influence. It is an obvious turn, in 2013 Mrs. Tivić wrote to Vučić not to divide the Serbian people, as he did in the 2018 campaign, when he also talked about the British. Where did that turn come from, you’ll have to ask her,” he says.
Vučić between the support of Trivić and Veliki petek with Dodik
Vukanović, still an MP in the NSRS, adds that Vučić will never openly go against Dodik, but it is also evident that Trivić has certain connections with Vučić’s regime.
“I have already repeated on numerous occasions over the past 12 years that the opposition in the RS should rely on itself and on its own resources, and not on someone’s help from the outside, whether it is Vučić or the international community… Both Vučić and the parties are always playing the one who is in power is now Dodik”, states Vukanović.
Political scientist Cvijetin Milivojević states that Vučić’s intolerance towards Dodik has existed ever since, he states, Dodik realized that “the moment Vučić decided to accept what he accepted in 2013 regarding Kosovo, it will be even easier for him to renounce RS”.
“It’s no longer a secret, Dodik has started looking for more guarantees for the survival of Srpska in Moscow, for the last two years in Beijing. Even though there is an agreement on parallel connections, so it should demand that from Serbia, as a signatory of the Dayton Agreement. Foreigners often ask Vučić to calm down Dodik, and he often fails to do so, although he would like to do it sometime. In a way, Dodik got out of his control,” he says.
Milivojević sees the meeting for Good Friday as the fruit of Vučić’s pragmatic feelings.
“Dodik is a symbol of the RS, it is estimated that there are almost 2,000,000 voters in Serbia who are directly or indirectly from the other side of the Drina, on whom Dodik can have influence with calls to vote or not to vote for Vučić and SNS. That is his probably justified fear. That relationship with them functions at the level of what was called “peaceful active coexistence” among the Non-Aligned – they don’t like each other very much, but it works, at least in appearance, as something that lasts,” this political scientist points out.
His colleague from Banja Luka, journalist and president of the “ReStart” association, Stefan Blagić, says that it is already noticeable that relations between the president of Serbia and Republika Srpska are not at an enviable level.
“The public could already notice that the relations between the President of Serbia and the President of Srpska have not been at an enviable level for some time, but institutional relations exist, which could be seen from the previous meeting between Dodik and Vučić.
Blagić adds that we should not ignore the fact that Vučić is an “ultra-pragmatic politician”, and that there is still a lot of time before the next elections, so it would not surprise him to play both cards.
“It is enough for Dodik to change his rhetoric and to turn over a new leaf with foreigners, because precisely Dodik’s warlike and potentially dangerous rhetoric has become a “stone around the neck” of Aleksandar Vučić. It has long been clear that Dodik does not help peace and stability in these areas,” he says.
Questionable earlier support of Vučić Dodik
Our interlocutor adds that Vučić supported Dodik before every election since 2014.
“Vučić played an important, if not crucial, role in keeping Dodik in power, he said what suited Dodik – that there are some foreigners, British agents, who want to arrest him. Essentially, he always worked in favor of Dodik, except in the last elections when Vučić behaved somewhat neutrally, which is commendable,” he says.
Vukanović doubts that anyone from Dodik’s opposition will have the support of official Belgrade, and he sees the speculations about Trivić more as raising fame and giving importance to her newly founded movement, than as essential support.
“You should ask her for more details. In my opinion, it is not good at all to rely on any center of power outside the Republika Srpska,” says Vukanović.
Milivojević sees Vučić Dodik’s earlier support as questionable.
“Dodik and Boris Tadić also had a friendship that was not just a political partnership, and Dodik and Vučić were never friends. At DS party rallies, Dodik spoke very clearly against Nikolić and Vučić, and called on voters to vote for Tadić,” Milivojević recalls.
This political scientist also notes that the SNSD leader never directly supported Vučić, although by going to the parliamentary and Belgrade elections in Serbia, which he has the right to do given his dual citizenship, he gave an indirect message to the voters in Serbia who are from “the other side”. sides of the Drina” to vote for SNS and Vučić. He also notes that Trivić also voted in those elections, and that she also supported Vučić.
They voted in the 2022 elections, and they traveled to Belgrade to exercise their right to vote in the presidential, parliamentary and Belgrade elections.
“Since the parliamentary elections in 2014, Vučić has worked on both mills, both the government and the opposition. “Even in 2014, some Vučić propaganda wizards offered free services to Dodik and the coalition around SDS, the largest opposition party,” says Milivojević.
The 2022 elections and the appointment of Dodik’s opponent as Vučić’s adviser
Earlier speculations were confirmed by the arrest of two prominent members of the Serbian Progressive Party in Republika Srpska on charges of helping Dodik’s opposition.
Vlada Mandić and Adam Šukalo, members of the Main Board of the SNS, were released after the search and detention of the vehicles of the members of the Main Board of the SNS, without explaining why they were detained, the media wrote.
The detention caused outrage from the opposition in Srpska, including Trivić herself, who spoke of Mandić and Šukal as friends of the Republika Srpska.
Mandić was previously detained during the campaign for local elections in Nikšić last year, this SNS official was detained for questioning with nine other people on suspicion of bringing money into Montenegro for the purpose of buying votes in Nikšić, she announced at the time. Pobjeda from Podgorica.
Šukalo was recently appointed as an adviser to the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić. He is in charge of regional issues.
Šukalo – opposition member in RS, government in Serbia
In 2004 and 2012, Adam Šukalo was elected as a member of the Gradiška Municipal Assembly, and from 2010 to 2013 he was the president of the Serbian Progressive Party in the RS. After conflicts within the party, Šukalo founded the Progressive Party. He became a deputy in the Assembly of the Republic of Srpska in 2014 in the NS coalition, the Democratic People’s Alliance and the Serbian Radical Party, Dr. Vojislav Šešelj. He spent several months in a coalition with Dodik’s party, and then moved to the parliamentary club of the opposition PDP. In the 2018 elections, he was a PDP candidate for the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly in Sarajevo, but he did not get a mandate, and then he came to Serbia and became a deputy in the Serbian Parliament from the SNS list, in which he is also a member of the Main Board. Earlier in 2018.
While Vukanović says that Vučić took a neutral position, Milivojević believes that the SNS president directly intervened against Dodik, by sending these members of the Main Board.
“Those elections were specific because it seemed to me that Vučić had no intention of completely collapsing Dodik, but wanted to seriously undermine him. “He was actually rooting for Dodik to lose the presidential elections, but for the SNSD to retain power, and thus to control both Trivić and the Government of the Republika Srpska, where Dodik would have the main influence, but he would not be the president of the Republic,” Milivojević believes.
This political scientist sees the appointment of Šukalo as a message to Dodik, but given that Šukalo does not have excessive influence in the RS – the special effect, he believes, was not achieved.
Blagić believes that this move confirmed speculations about the closeness of Trivić and Vučić.
Vukanović, when asked about these arrests, says that he did not participate in that part of the campaign and that he does not have direct evidence of what was written, but that there were obviously connections with SNS. Speaking about the appointment of Šukal, he first of all points out his stints in Srpska, then his move to Belgrade and Vučić’s party, and says that he probably has connections with the PDP and Stanivuković, as well as with Trivić.
“Will it help them? I don’t know, it’s important to me that I don’t have any connections with Belgrade or with the patriarch, that I don’t depend on them. I can’t carry other people’s crosses,” says Vukanović.
Where is Draško?
Milivojević recalls that immediately after the victory over SNSD in Banja Luka, Stanivuković was a special guest at the opening of the monument to Stefan Nemanja in Belgrade, and he comments on the accusations of “symbiosis” as unfounded.
“Stanivuković, like the mayor of Bjeljina, are mayors who come from the opposition, but they do not have a majority in the city assemblies. The only way to survive is what Stanivuković is doing. He shows constructiveness by not attacking Dodik too often, knowing that he will block the functioning of the city. It is ignored that Trivić got more votes than Dodik in Banja Luka, which means that Stanivuković did a good campaign for Trivić. There is personal vanity there, both were vice-presidents of the PDP and were considered future presidents instead of the current leadership… I also think that the animosity that Trivić showed towards Stanivuković was based on a lack of argumentation”, the political scientist opined.
