The Swan Song of Dodik's Political Fable

By Muharem Cero

A seductive, melodious, pleasing to the ear, extremely beautiful, the swan's song also signifies its end. As such, it entered Aesop's fables and Cicero's story. With its symbolism, it achieved timeless meaning of a disappearing illusion that departs along with its creator.

Regardless of when and by whom, for how many Judas's coins, it was conceived, it took hold and crept into the political and public space of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the whisper of an intruder, and only truly came to life and defined positions with the Prud Agreement, continuing its existence through the Banja Luka, Mostar, and Sarajevo agreements of the political masters of Bosnian statehood. It ceased to be a fable and became a bloody mallet that killed its essence.

Precisely like that, the seductive song of the "AGREED STATE" through the voice of its spokesperson Milorad Dodik, through a path of intoxicating trance, reaches a painful, hungover awakening at its predictable end.

From the same fable grew the poisonous fruits of the January ninth "state" continuity of Republika Srpska and the deception of entity ownership over the territory of its limited jurisdiction. Both are poisonous stinkhorn mushrooms that achieve the effect of dying Bosnian sovereignty and territorial integrity. Both are grotesque lobbying optics of the Dayton Peace Agreement.
Both met their end through decisions of the highest judicial instances of the State of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The verdict of the Appellate Division of the BiH Court marked the end of the illusion that the territory of the Republika Srpska entity is equivalent to ownership of that territory.

This, as a precedent, will serve for the revision of all ownership registers in this entity, and it is quite certain that there will be many unconstitutional and illegal solutions that, by the letter of the Constitution and laws, must be returned to their previous state.

The entire succession mass of the former SFRY located in the territory of the Republika Srpska entity, as well as the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, must finally be registered to its titular and sole owner, the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as of April 6, 1992. The same property law fate will be determined for the other part of state property, that from the state continuity of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina to BiH, with the boundary date of December 31, 1990.

These constitutional and legal actions will finally establish the guaranteed territorial integrity of the state of BiH, and make Bosnia equally sovereign to all newly formed states from the dissolution of SFRY.
The issue of the use of this state wealth, owned by all BiH citizens, will only be determined by the adoption of the Law on State Property Management in the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH.

The other poisonous stinkhorn mushroom is these days concluding with the saga of the RS referendum. Unashamedly, the spokesperson of the "AGREED STATE," Milorad Dodik, is not forcing the anti-Dayton January ninth symbolism, but with the rhetoric of a "small political player," he is trying, with the swan's dying song, to force the continuity of the January ninth para-state and the Dayton entity of Republika Srpska. With success, he would secure for RS a non-existent international subjectivity (allegedly introduced into RBiH before its recognition on April 6, 1992).

That success would guarantee him the revision and annulment of all constitutional solutions that, by the letter of Annex IV and Annex X (solutions within the jurisdiction of the PIC and the High Representative OHR), have made BiH more stable and secure in the process of establishing its sovereignty and territorial integrity in the post-Dayton period.

The conflict between two mutually exclusive continuities, the state-Dayton one from Article 1/1 of Annex IV, and the non-existent, para-state one, condemned by The Hague verdicts for joint criminal enterprises, cannot be resolved in any other way than by the defeat of the latter.

That is the point where the song becomes silence, and then the roar of the dying swan. Together, the stinkhorn mushrooms, their creators, whoever they may be, as well as the PR of the "AGREED STATE," Milorad Dodik, will go to the ugly dung heap of Bosnian history. And isn't the cry of this dying swan these days becoming less and less melodiously seductive, and more and more like the death rattle of a wailing woman?