Stop the Squabbling

In the deafness of its own national self-isolation in Republika Srpska, for the last twenty years, the collective self-perception of the Dayton Peace Agreement has been carefully nurtured and built. It was necessary to cover up the failures of the recently concluded great-state wars.

The constitutional character of Republika Srpska, achieved through Dayton, was distorted and manipulated. It was not easy to establish and confirm that the egg is the mother of the chicken.

By the decision of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the entity of Republika Srpska has finally been reduced to its Dayton measure and the constitutional character of a comfortable local self-government – an "administrative arrangement" in the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The only recognized continuity of international subjectivity, it has been confirmed, belongs exclusively to Bosnia and Herzegovina itself.

In a Bećković-esque manner, to themselves and their own, some had promised long ago "we will squabble more." And they did. First, they declared January 9, 1992, as the Day of Statehood of Republika Srpska by law. They cunningly created an institutional link between the Pale para-state and the Dayton administrative arrangement. The foundation of a falsified state continuity was laid.

Carefully and patiently, they moved forward. The state institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by analogy with the Pale January 9th Declaration, nominated "common." And it was accepted. The Pale nomination was first introduced into the public space as a sporadic slip of the tongue by Serbian leaders, and then as undisputed and the only correct one.

Encouraged by this "passability," the portrayal of the entity as a state also took hold in a similar way. It no longer grated on the ears, especially not those from "one's own national flock." They began to mentally live in the virtual emerging state of Republika Srpska.

The story moved towards its intended end. With a good (as it turned out, very bad) assessment of the changed international circumstances and a favorable historical moment, they gambled on proving the international legal subjectivity of Republika Srpska.

The test of passability for the false statehood and sovereignty of Republika Srpska was supposed to be the referendum on the Court and Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Any success in this endeavor would have confirmed the possibility of realizing the previously created project.

That would then have produced a series of constitutionally and legally permissible actions in the process of completing the establishment of the much-desired statehood of Republika Srpska, but also the consequent abolition of the statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Bosnia and Herzegovina would then have been faced, without the possibility of a constitutional response, with the predictable results of the referendum question: "Are you in favor of Republika Srpska seceding from Bosnia and Herzegovina and establishing the state of Republika Srpska" (to begin with...?).

Proportional to the size of the imagined, and expected, goal, the dissatisfaction with the decision on futility and failure is equally great. The clamor of the tragic figures will last for some time.

The sobering up should be beneficial and healing for the entire Bosnian-Herzegovinian society.

Those who participated in the attempt, with their own knowledge or ignorance, intent or negligence, will be obliged to reset an entire wrongly grown mythomaniacal narrative.

One hopes, and wishes, that we will not squabble like that again in a Balkan way.