In the meantime, however, Dodik and Covic seem oblivious to that perspective, and their joint political stance – paired with the narrow-minded politics of the Bosniaks – again threatens Bosnia’s territorial and constitutional integrity.
The depth of the crisis is reflected not only in Dodik’s latest public statements but also in the conclusions of the special session of the RS Assembly held on February 17.
In his opening remarks to the National Assembly, Dodik started with words “Goodbye Bosnia and Herzegovina, welcome RSexit.”
But during the session he was forced to tone down his initially proposed conclusions, as many MPs found claimed they were too radical and potentially dangerous for RS.
According to the final conclusions, which were adopted after almost eight hours of heated debates, RS officials and institutions will not participate in the decision-making process in state institutions until new election legislation and a law on the Constitutional Court are adopted.
Additionally, RS officials are not to implement “undemocratic and anti-Dayton” decisions made by the Constitutional Court and the Office of the High Representative, OHR.
Undermining the authority of the Constitutional Court and OHR represent a major challenge to Bosnia’s Dayton agreement. Yet Bosnian Serb officials say worse is still to come.
Dodik plans to give Bosniak parties a maximum of two months to agree to draft laws on the election process and the Constitutional Court, which SNSD and HDZ will propose in the next few days. Since a compromise is highly unlikely, he then plans to launch a procedure to repatriate to the RS a number of competencies that in the past were transferred from the two entities to the state level.
Dodik would then also hold a referendum on secession of RS by the end of the year, most likely around the time of October elections, Bosnian Serb sources say.
Ahead of elections in 2016, Dodik also called a referendum, at that time asking RS citizens to vote on whether the continue marking their ‘statehood day’, which was banned by the Constitutional Court who claimed the holiday was discriminatory towards non-Serbs in the entity. The court as well as local and institutional officials condemned the vote.
These moves would push Bosnia towards a breakup, which would certainly lead to a new ethnic conflict that could easily spread across an unstable region.
As Dodik has used separatist threats to win elections for the last 14 years, many question or even mock his recent words. Nevertheless, several of Dodik’s closest associates, as well as some of his foes, say he is getting closer to eventually making this move.
“Step by step, the whole region is fraught with conflicts, which ultimately remains a key argument for European politicians who oppose enlargement to deny Western Balkan countries full EU membership,” Tadic noted in his interview for Danas.
Crisis further exposes Europe’s divisions:
“The last eight years have seen the erosion of all the positive things that have been done in the area of stabilisation of regional tensions and once again there are threats of the disintegration of existing states and covert rattling of arms,” he said, adding that these and other crises in the Balkans were the consequences of the “catastrophic mistakes” made by the EU and the international community.
The crisis has indeed laid bare the growing divisions in the EU. Several Western officials have complained that the ambassadors of EU countries in Bosnia have been unable to agree even over a joint press statement about the crisis, let alone over concrete actions that would resolve it.
Tensions have also seemed to grow between the new EU Commissioners for Foreign Affairs and Enlargement, Josep Borrell and Oliver Varhelyi.
In another move that would likely make the situation only worse, when EU leaders called a meeting of all top Balkan leaders in Brussels on Sunday, February 16, from Bosnia, they invited only Zeljko Komsic, the current chairman of the state presidency and a Bosnian Croat whose legitimacy is questioned by most Bosnian Croats, rather than all three members of the presidency.
Dodik dismissed this meeting. “He is going there privately, to express his private views,” Dodik told the media about Komsic.
“This is a hoax and this is what the international community does,” he concluded.
Srecko Latal is a journalist, editor and analyst who has been covering the Balkans since the 1990s.
The opinions expressed in the Comment section are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN.
