Finger on the trigger is in the hands of "Bayram celebrants" Radončić and Izetbegović

No matter how much the famous Dodik referendum aims to diminish the significance of marking the twentieth anniversary of the Dayton Peace Agreement, it has not succeeded in that. Through a series of regional and intra-Bosnian gatherings, the agreement was debated and, with reason, polemicized.

With the adoption of the Work Program of the Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina this week, the adoption of the Law on Forests and the Law on Agricultural Land by the end of this year has finally been announced.

All three of the above-mentioned events are very much interconnected.

The constitutional and legal determinant of any state identity and its integrity is also its ownership of its own territory (forest and agricultural land), as a public good for all its citizens.

The last war against Bosnian statehood was intended to break up society and seize its territories. The extent to which this succeeded is confirmed by the state of affairs in the twenty-year deviation from Dayton.

Forests and agricultural land make up almost 56% of the total territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This public good, along with river courses, is the largest BH resource, and by its definition, it should be interpreted as state property of BiH.

According to constitutional state continuity (Annex IV), the titleholder of ownership over forest and agricultural land is the state of BiH, and its administrative arrangements, at whatever level, can only be with the right of use to the extent and in the manner that the titleholder enables them by its law.

The war goals of taking control of the territory of BiH have not subsided even in the post-war period, only now they are being carried out by other means, based on an alleged perception and interpretation of Dayton.

Faced with such attempts, the OHR on March 18, 2005, adopted a law prohibiting the disposal of state property, and further encroachment was thwarted by the decision of the Constitutional Court of BiH to annul the RS law on taking over state property of BiH on the territory of the RS.

Despite the ban on disposing of state property, the Republika Srpska in 2006 and 2008 adopted laws on forests and agricultural land, by which it unilaterally established its ownership over forest and agricultural land.

So far, there have been no reactions by filing constitutional complaints, nor has Article 2 on the prohibition of disposing of state property been applied, which provides for the legal nullity of such actions.

The lack of reaction is fortunately not a loss of its possibility, so it is expected that those with active legitimacy will finally act (the state attorney's office, the Council of Ministers, the member of the BiH Presidency, the state Parliament in both houses, the OHR and the High Representative).

The sparse media announcement of the federal laws on forests and agricultural land does not give any hint as to what legal solutions Novalić's government will offer to the parliament.

If they are a copy of the legal solutions from the RS, it will be a land-registry internal succession of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. All declarative promises of preserving BH integrity would be betrayed by that act, and BiH would be irreversibly and comfortably placed on the tracks of its dissolution.

It is to be believed that the "Bayram coalition" will recognize the subtle game of all players within it and return this story to the framework of Dayton solutions, which, fortunately, cannot be changed by mere political compromise of a market nature. Therefore, the finger on the trigger is in the hands of "Bayram celebrants" Radončić and Izetbegović.