If Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska, is convicted to a prison sentence by a Sarajevo federal court, the Serbian autonomous entity could find itself further distanced from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bosnia and Herzegovina finds itself just one step away from renewed ethnic-institutional conflict, as Sarajevo’s federal prosecutor has requested judges deliver a guilty verdict of serious criminal conduct against the president of Bosnia’s Serbian autonomous entity of Republika Srpska.
Dodik is accused of promulgating two laws adopted by the Republika Srpska Assembly in 2023, which blocked the implementation of all decisions of Bosnia’s Constitutional Court, as well as decisions made by the High Representative of the International Community, who is currently the German diplomat Christian Schmidt.
Meant to grant a binding legal back-up to the Bosnian institutions, Schmidt acts as a key institutional figure who oversees the Dayton Agreement, signed in 1995 by the US, EU, Russia, Serbia, Croatia, UN and Bosnia. The agreement brought about the end of the war among the Bosniak, Serbian and Croatian communities that started in 1992 during the bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia.
The prosecutor, Nedim Ćosić, this Wednesday requested that the court convicts Milorad Dodik to serve a sentence of up to five years in prison and ban him from political activity.
The Bosnian federal judges are to issue the verdict between this Wednesday and Tuesday 25 February.
The Dayton Agreement’s institutional clauses
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, disobeying the decisions of the High Representative is a criminal offence and could result in Dodik’s automatic dismissal from his position as President of the Republika Srpska.
On Monday night, Republika Srpska officials in its capital city of Banja Luka issued a public statement saying that “the National Assembly, the government and all institutions of Republika Srpska will make radical decisions in response to every verdict of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
“Also, all representatives of the Serbian Republika Srpska officials in the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as all employees of the bodies of Bosnia and Herzegovina, will withdraw from the joint institutions and stop working.”
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said that he hoped the court would take “wise decisions” in order to prevent the further destabilisation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Last Monday in Budapest, Dodik received similar support from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who said that “the political attacks on Dodik should stop now and he should stop being punished.”
Many observers regard the statements as an implicit Republika Srpska threat of a unilateral secession declaration, which would be in violation of the aforementioned Dayton Agreement.
Milorad Dodik is regarded by the international community as a pro-Russian leader in the heart of the Western Balkans.
The case against him and Miloš Lukić, head of the Republika Srpska Official Gazette, started late 2023 after that Dodik officially rejected the legal and constitutional authority of the High Representative.
The Assembly of Republika Srpska passed two laws that gave the Serbian entity of Bosnia absolute power on elections and referenda. It also bypassed Christian Schmidt, who never received the rubber stamp of the UN Security Council.
