Belgrade messages from Mir: Vučić's "reconciliation", Dodik's nationalism, and Ivanić's betrayal

By Edina Latif

Today, each of the actors of the meeting held in the villa symbolically named Mir sent their messages from Belgrade. The overall "artistic impression" is that the neighboring country and its leaders are exclusively interested in their own country, and that they are ready to provide support (whatever that means) to political representatives from Republika Srpska, through whom they will not hesitate to achieve some of their interests. 

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić clearly indicated that he is in a pre-election presidential campaign, that the national state interest of his country is his top priority, and that he leaves room for political representatives from RS to make their own decisions regarding the revision of the verdict in the BiH lawsuit before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The statements were, in a word, coordinated, writes Patria.

The President of RS, Milorad Dodik, perhaps due to a sense of ease, as he can travel freely to Serbia despite sanctions, unleashed his full fury on Bosniaks, denied the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and attempted to portray through nationalist theses that Bosniaks hate Serbs.

The barrage of insults and the incredible amount of hatred emanating from every word he spoke was probably contributed to by the fact that the villa with such a beautiful name, MIR, does not suit his destructive plans.

Vučić is aware that Dodik is under sanctions. And even if they are related, now that he has led Serbia towards the EU, and will open a new chapter for negotiations on Monday, he is not willing to throw away everything he has done so far for the sake of defending Dodik and his retrograde and nationalist ideas. 

However, Vučić is ready to defend Serbia, but without the rhetoric used by the President of RS, who can serve him excellently as his spokesperson in situations like the current one. 

On the other hand, the Chairman of the Presidency of BiH, Mladen Ivanić, wholeheartedly defended the institutions of BiH, the state that his partner Dodik denied, and at one point, in front of TV cameras, they appeared like a discordant orchestra that did not arrive in Belgrade with a unified political stance.

Ivanić's facial expression betrayed considerable concern, as if he were the accused state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose head he is, rather than a neighboring country.

The announcement that he will be in daily contact with Vučić and Nikolić, and that he does not want to talk about specific conclusions, is clear evidence that they have received the green light from the political leadership of Serbia for the announced blockades of authorities in BiH, and that a turbulent period awaits us.

Whatever they do, just like on September 25th when they organized an unconstitutional referendum and called on citizens in RS to come out and vote, Vučić will tell them, "I am not interfering, but let Dodik and Ivanić think and decide."

And yes! Ivanić revealed to the BiH public from Belgrade that since June last year, he has been working behind the backs of both Bakir Izetbegović and Dragan Čović. Even then, as a member of the Presidency of BiH, without informing his colleagues, he sent a letter to the International Court of Justice in The Hague stating that Sakib Softić is not an authorized agent of BiH.

He revealed only now, when everything has heated up, that it is not foreign to him (he also did this for the unconstitutional referendum and when he lined up the BiH Armed Forces in Banja Luka on January 9th) to act unconstitutionally and on his own, without consensus with his two colleagues.

He revealed that he worked for the interests of another state, not his own. In translation, this means betrayal!

Does he have the right to accuse Izetbegović of acting outside the institutions of BiH and creating a parallel system of government in BiH? Who works for the state and who works against the state? And why are Ivanić and Dodik so concerned about the revision of the verdict in the BiH lawsuit against Serbia, another state? Did Bakir Izetbegović have an alternative when it came to filing the request for revision, and didn't he himself say before the decision was officially announced that he was aware it would cause a crisis?

Of course, he had no alternative. Just as Vučić stated that no one has the right to humiliate Serbia and the Serbian people and that he will not allow it, no one, even if he is Bakir Izetbegović, has the right to trade this country, truth, justice, and victims. 

Vučić is right when he said that we have gone back 22 years, and perhaps even a few more.

The daily communication between Belgrade and the political leadership of RS, just like in the time when genocide was committed and aggression was carried out against BiH, is reminiscent of the bloody years in the Balkans. Those for which BiH sued Serbia in 1993.