The race between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Dodik enters the final stretch

N1 reported on the news by investigative journalist Casey Michael, who published evidence that the lobbying firm McGinnis Lochridge is currently lobbying for Republika Srpska in the United States. The journalist published the contract between the aforementioned lobbying firm and the Government of Republika Srpska, proving the cooperation between this BiH entity and the lobbying company based in Texas. 

In short and simplified terms - the lobbying firm of Casey Michael commits to providing legal advice and representing RS, and working with its representatives. The firm will advise RS on its rights and obligations under international law, the Dayton Agreement, and the European Convention on Human Rights. McGinnis Lochridge will advise RS on rights and obligations towards the level of BiH, as well as relations with the Office of the High Representative (OHR), the Peace Implementation Council (PIC), the European Union, and other international bodies. Such hiring of brains from Texas costs taxpayers from Republika Srpska 80,000 US dollars, on the 15th of each month. The contract, signed on behalf of RS by Zlatan Kokić, Minister for European Integration and International Cooperation, lasts until the last day of 2019.

Those who follow the internal-external, political-business moves of Milorad Dodik will know that this is not the first time the first man of Republika Srpska has paid lobbying firms. In 2009, the media reported that RS, an entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina - with a very modest budget and extremely low standard of living for its citizens, much like the other BiH entity - was third in the world that year in terms of spending on lobbying, amounting to 4.6 million dollars, thus far ahead and far more than the overarching Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which allocated zero marks for lobbying needs.

So, does it make sense that the populist Dodik allocates money from the mouths of hungry citizens and pays lobbyists to convince world powers that Bosnia and Herzegovina is an impossible state, and that they should allow him to separate his part and rule it in the way he thinks it should be - i.e., tyrannically? In any case, it makes more sense than the fact that political parties, which present themselves as pro-Bosnian and pro-European, primarily the SDA, have dug into their own positions and show not even beginner-level creativity in how to respond to Dodik's recklessness.

It can already be concluded that Dodik has reached the halfway point in his secessionist intentions, and that various McGinnises Lochridges are doing the other half of the work for him. 

So, it is not - as Andrej Nikolaidis notes in the text "Dodik truly does not need war: Peacefully and sovereignly towards the secession of Republika Srpska" - a question of what is written in the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but rather what the situation on the ground is, so the debate on the constitutionality of Dodik's statements and behavior is completely misguided. "The constitution is not worth a dime if there is no force that can ensure its respect." And, the situation on the ground in Bosnia and Herzegovina is such that the entire State Prosecutor's Office, the Agency for Investigation and Protection SIPA, the Intelligence-Security Agency of BiH, and other law enforcement agencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina are so mired in crime and have bowed to the whims of politics that for more than two decades they have not reacted to the secessionist-fascist outbursts of the highest political officials in the country. The deeply anesthetized security agencies of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the obedient and agile entity Ministry of Interior of Republika Srpska sufficiently indicate that Dodik has dismantled the state's security apparatus, while strengthening his own judiciary, which serves to implement and preserve everything he conceives, or whatever comes to him as a dispatch from Russia or Belgrade. More precisely, at this moment there is not a single judicial institution in Bosnia and Herzegovina capable of upholding the Constitution and sanctioning Dodik for his attacks on the State, and there are institutions capable of preserving and sanctioning everything that threatens Dodik's policy and his attacks on the State. 

To the question of whether the Bosnian-Herzegovinian side itself could have done more in the case of the prosecution processes before the Hague Tribunal, and how it is that Serbia went unpunished even though it initiated and coordinated the bloodshed of the 1990s, Nevenka Tromp, a former associate of Hague prosecutor Geoffrey Nice, explained this in an interview with Patria as follows: "Serbia, better than any other post-Yugoslav state, understood the power of the Tribunal and from day one tried with all its might to influence its work," said Tromp, and then continued, "Bosniaks, and later Kosovars, are convinced that it is so clear and obvious to everyone who the victims are and who the aggressors are. Few of them even considered that the Tribunal might disappoint them. Because they saw the Tribunal as their salvation and their natural ally. That is why there is still disbelief among victims in BiH after verdicts that do not attribute responsibility for crimes leading to Belgrade."  

The fate of Bosnia and Herzegovina at this moment is in a similar situation as during the Hague verdicts. Of all the post-Yugoslav states, only the SDA, as the largest and leading Bosniak party, did not understand the power of lobbying. Therefore, Bosnia and Herzegovina has come to such a situation that at this moment its fate depends solely on whether Dodik's lobbyists will succeed in convincing world powers to accept his offer.