Constitutional Court's decision on January 9th will be almost as significant as marking Statehood Day

On Thursday, November 26th and Friday, November 27th, the Constitutional Court of BiH will consider the request of Bakir Izetbegović, member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for an assessment of the constitutionality of a section of the Law on Holidays of the Republic of Srpska, in which he requests that January 9th no longer be marked as the Day of RS. In anticipation of the Constitutional Court's decision, the Patria news agency is publishing an analysis that states the significance of the decision.

By: Muharem Cero

Where the art and will to accept facts cease, the birth of Slavic myths, falsifiers of historical truths, begins.

On November 26th and 27th, the plenary session of the Constitutional Court of BiH will be held regarding the appeal of Bakir Izetbegović, member of the BiH Presidency, in the case of assessing the constitutionality of the RS Law on Holidays. Whether by chance or significance, the decision is to be made on the days marking the Statehood Day of BiH. In any case, the significance of the Constitutional Court's decision will be almost equal to the significance of marking Statehood Day.

The Constitutional Court will finally end the schizophrenic conflict of continuity located between a threatening "mythical spirit" and the Dayton word.

Faced with the failure to establish the first "trans-Drina state of the Serb people," the remnants of the institutional policies of that will have resorted to mythomaniacal falsification of the newly established Dayton structures in BiH. By establishing a para-state continuity between the Karadžić-Mladić creation and the merely administrative arrangement of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina nominated as the entity of Republika Srpska, they have produced a conflict of competing continuities and thwarted the institutional materialization of the Dayton Peace Agreement, making the implementation of its Annex IV impossible.

A great deal of quasi-intellectual, quasi-political, lobbying, media, financial, and other logistics has poured into this Dayton diversion, with the aim of changing the constitutional and legal perception of the character of BiH's Dayton state structure and the position of the RS entity within it. At the very heart of the intention is the refusal to reduce the envisioned first "trans-Drina state of the Serb people" to merely an administrative arrangement of the sovereign, unified, and territorially integral state of Bosnia and Herzegovina as the sole international legal subject that emerged from the dissolution of the former Yugoslav Federation.

Due to the lack of resistance to these aspirations of those Greater Serbian elites, the processes have unfortunately reached an almost metastasized state of Bosnian statehood, so the appeal has come precisely as a balm for the dying. The reactions of the RS-oriented, myth-prone hawks, defending the constitutionality of the attempted diversion with bland statements that it is an exclusively political, not legally based act, are constitutionally unsustainable. This is a skillful substitution of theses, because it is precisely the contested provisions of the RS Law on Holidays that are politically motivated attempts to preserve the spirit of the trans-Drina state of Republika Srpska "for some better times and changed international circumstances," as Karadžić and Dobrica Ćosić vowed to their followers.

It is expected that the Constitutional Court of BiH will confirm that the contested provisions of the RS Law on Holidays and the declaration of January 9th as the state holiday of Republika Srpska have violated Article I/1 of Annex IV, which guarantees the continuity of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina as the sole constitutional and legal subject that can and must exercise it.

Anything else would be a significant change in the constitutional and legal character of BiH, which would continue the agony of its demise, through models of a state community, a union of republics, or a confederal-federal arrangement, as transitional models for the collapse and disappearance of its statehood.

By eliminating the artificially created competition of state continuity and its entities, according to the letter of Dayton, the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina would return to the historical trust of implementing the Dayton Peace Agreement, and would leave its further development or changes to its successful implementation and the healing of the political mentality of its citizens.

As for Dayton, may the hand that signed it be gilded, and may both of its hands be gilded who implement it and move forward from it.