It will happen when I return from Russia!

By: Rasim Belko

They looked like school friends in front of the cameras. They nudged each other and smiled. But when they started talking, it was clear that the meeting in Mostar, hosted by Dragan Čović, with Milorad Dodik, SNSD leader, and the Sarajevo tricolors without Elmedin Konaković, ended in fiasco.

Admittedly, not much was expected from the meeting, although the actors tried to convince us that they were close to some agreement. They have been trying to convince us for almost a year that an agreement is possible, but after every meeting, they say they were close, yet there is no agreement.

There was no agreement in Mostar, just as there will certainly not be one when Dodik, as he said, “returns from Russia”.

While the BiH public and the international community are trying to convince themselves of the unity of coalition partners at the state government level, we are witnessing the crisis developing in several directions and threatening to further undermine the constitutional, political, and judicial system.

Because, at the meetings, they talk about how the atmosphere is “warm”, and Dodik, when he returns to Banja Luka, announces that he will withdraw his representatives not only from government institutions but also from police and armed forces.

Such an atmosphere is far from an atmosphere of agreement.

When we add to that the words from the press conference in Mostar, it is clear that the current government is on its way to leading Bosnia and Herzegovina into an even deeper crisis.

“We must deliver results on the Constitutional Court now, and there are diametrically opposed views on this. Gentlemen from the Bosniak people think that this should not be discussed until we enter the EU,” said Dodik, indirectly implying that for him there will be no other agreements until the Bosniaks, the Sarajevo tricolors, agree to hand over the Constitutional Court of BiH to him.

Dodik knows that when he occupies the Constitutional Court of BiH through entity decision-making and a majority composed of judges under the flags of HDZ and SNSD, he will have removed all the barricades that were an insurmountable obstacle to his anti-state and secessionist aspirations.

And therefore, he clearly and without reservation states: “We are moving towards resolving these issues. The Constitutional Court is a difficult issue for Bosniaks, but they will have to resolve it, or we will not resolve many other things.”

Thus, the sole purpose of the meetings held in a circular system Sarajevo - Mostar - Banja Luka is to soften the Sarajevo tricolors SDP, NiP, NS to the breaking point and force them to agree to conditions that lead to constitutional and legal chaos.

Dodik and Čović, by repeating their demands, constantly keep the tricolors under pressure, knowing that one day they will have to break.

Dragan Čović knows this too, so he uses every meeting to repeat the story that there can be no talk without the reform of the Election Law. But besides the legitimacy he has insisted on for a long time, he and Dodik are now insisting on a new composition of the Central Election Commission of BiH, in whose election the House of Peoples would be involved.

Of course, the tricolors from Sarajevo are, for now, against such demands in this case as well, but there is no doubt that this demand will be repeated at every subsequent meeting.

And so, in a reform government composed of secessionists, Christian democrats, and liberal leftists, we have gotten a central committee of Bosnia and Herzegovina that moves around BiH cities and decides the fate of the country and its citizens.

There is no Tito, there is no CKJ, but there is Vladimir Putin. So, when Dodik returns from mother Russia, we will know the new set of laws “without which there are no agreements.” And so it goes in circles.

The institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina are secondary in this story, because neither the state government nor the Parliament has anything to discuss until the three leaders of the tricolors agree to the demands of Dodik and Čović.

Therefore, it is difficult to understand on what basis the US Ambassador Michael Murphy and his diplomatic colleagues assess that the current state-level government has initiated processes and reforms.

It is even more difficult to understand European diplomats and officials who announce a positive assessment of the European path for a country in which the pillars of statehood are being dismantled – the Constitutional Court, the Court, and the Prosecutor's Office, and police agencies are used for the personal use of leaders whose cadres lead them.

If we add to this the difficult passage of decisions in the Council of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly, it is clear that Bosnia and Herzegovina is stuck in a vortex of conflicts that prevent it from moving forward.

Reforms have not happened, nor will they happen, especially when Dodik returns from Russia with new tasks for destabilization.