Will Inzko Cross the Rubicon?

By Muharem Cero

Today's meeting in Banja Luka between the leaders of SNSD, DNS, and SP is merely a confirmed political consensus on full, principled agreement in continuing the active obstruction of the implementation of the BiH Court's verdict on the registration of military property in the RS to BiH, in favor of the BiH Ministry of Defense.

The malicious partners, Pavić, Đokić, and Dodik, have announced amendments to the "competent law which will protect the property of the RS, meaning it will be stipulated that property cannot be registered based on decisions from outside Srpska without the consent of the Srpska parliament."

It is not unknown to the trio that the proposed amendments are contrary to the BiH Constitution, and that they were previously rejected by the BiH Constitutional Court in case U 1/11 with an assessment of the unconstitutionality of the Law on the Status of State Property of BiH in the territory of the entity Republika Srpska.

The announced amendments are nothing more than a recycling of the constitutional-legal positions from a futile attempt at a challenged legal solution.

At first glance, one might say it's just another one of Dodik's political duds, but is it really?

Dodik is (so far, seemingly successfully) moving the entire issue of registering military property in the RS, based on the executive and final decision of the BiH Constitutional Court and the appellate division of the BiH Court, from a legal-technical issue to a political-politicking one. By manipulating legal possibilities and procedures, and ultimately abusing rights, he is simultaneously trying to achieve one of his two set goals.

His focus is certainly on the primary goal. Trading the registration of so-called perspective locations in the RS to BiH and selling them dearly for the territorial distribution of all state property. The success of such an intention would create property-legal prerequisites for strengthening the political argumentation for the concept of confederation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Precisely because of such intentions, Čović and his political goals also stand behind such perfidious-concealed quiet support. As things stand, for now, there is no appealing partner in Bosniak-Bosniak politics for this intention, but beware.

The second goal of his actions is to secure a fallback position in the futile attempt at the primary goal. By engaging in political-legal gymnastics in achieving the first goal, Dodik is "buying time" and shifting the entire issue towards the expiration of the September deadline set for the regular meeting of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (NATO) at the ministerial level. Namely, the registration of property to BiH would certainly enable the activation of BiH's accession path to NATO, the so-called MAP, at this meeting.

The possible absence of military property registration, according to the previous positions of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, would not create the possibility of activating the MAP, and the entire process would be uncertainly postponed indefinitely. Institutional state mechanisms of BiH are certainly not capable of concluding this in the expected way - by confirming the rule of law and affirming a legal state. The substitution for the rule of law in the case of "Bosnia" are the possibilities foreseen by the Dayton Peace Agreement for the competencies of the OHR and the Bonn powers of its High Representative, Valentin Inzko.

Mr. Inzko, as the esteemed Ljubić would say, you too should roll the dice and cross the Rubicon.