OHR Trap: Schmidt Follows Dodik's Path of Destroying Constitutional Court, Tries to Install Vukoja!

By: Rasim Belko

The Office of the High Representative (OHR) and High Representative Christian Schmidt himself have no basis in the goals and tasks of their mission to directly engage in the election of a judge of the BiH Constitutional Court. Just as Schmidt could not have had a basis in suspending the Constitution of the FBiH in order to appoint a Government as envisioned by his cartographers.

But this time, Schmidt and the OHR are no longer just in sync with the agreement between the duo Plenković - Čović regarding the election of a judge of the BiH Constitutional Court, where HDZ and its partners from the Trojka are trying to install Marin Vukoja, a party cadre without judicial experience and knowledge.

The High Representative is now also in sync with Milorad Dodik, who, for his secessionist motives, is continuously working to undermine and ultimately destroy the Constitutional Court of BiH as the last barrier to the secession of Republika Srpska from BiH.

Dodik has set a condition for his coalition partners that foreign judges must leave the BiH Constitutional Court, and that voting must be by entity majority. By installing Vukoja, which Plenković, Čović, and Schmidt are working on synchronously and by accepting Dodik's conditions, it is clear that the Constitutional Court would have a majority of forces that block and paralyze integration processes and make decisions that dismantle institutions and undermine the state of BiH.

Yesterday, Patria published that verbal invitations have started coming from the OHR to opposition MPs in the Election and Appointment Committee, in order to discuss the process of appointing a judge of the BiH Constitutional Court.

Some MPs told us that they did not receive an invitation, and even if they had, they don't care and will not respond, because the OHR has nothing to do with this job. Some MPs confirmed to Patria that they did not receive an invitation either.

According to what is known so far, among the opposition MPs in the Election and Appointment Committee, only Edina Gabela will attend the meeting. This was confirmed to Patria by the president of the Party of BiH, Semir Efendić.

“She told me that she received a verbal invitation for a meeting on Wednesday and that she expected a written invitation, but did not receive one”, says Efendić, and when asked about the stance of MP Gabela, he answers: “She will present a clear stance, known from before, that the Committee in its current composition should finish the job and the started session that was never completed, and that this Committee should propose a list of candidates. HDZ tried to dismiss the committee, but failed”.

When asked if there is a possibility that the OHR will “win over” Gabela as the sixth vote in the Election and Appointment Committee, Efendić answered: “I am not afraid of that, because I don't believe it will happen”.

However, the fact that invitations from the OHR have been sent to opposition MPs and that the OHR clearly did not want to leave a trace of the invitations, causes fear in other parties that the Office of the High Representative is becoming a kind of shadow government, which is completing tasks that the Parliament of the Federation cannot.

Even laymen have no right to doubt that Schmidt and the OHR are trying to ensure Vukoja's passage in the Election and Appointment Committee, and the fact that the Committee session was scheduled for the same day as the session of the House of Representatives, September 27, is also significant.

Furthermore, the foresight of the chairperson Mirjana Marinković Lepić is even more interesting, who, along with the invitation to the session, sends a note to the MPs that it might last for two days. This has not been the practice so far, and given the agenda of the announced session, it is difficult to believe that it is merely to prevent parliamentarians from leaving before the job is done.

From Marinković Lepić's Cabinet, they assure us that this is precisely the reason, so that MPs can plan for two days, but when pointed out that this has not been the practice, they have no counter-example.

Therefore, it is obvious that Gabela, or possibly another MP who responds to the OHR, faces a trap that will contain a stick and a carrot, so it is quite clear that it will be difficult for anyone who goes to escape the clutches of the High Representative to nullify the constituent status of Bosniaks.

Thus, Schmidt and his office have proven that the charade with Dodik is just dulling the reason of patriotic forces and a labyrinth from which Republika Srpska should emerge as an independent state of the Serbian world, and the Federation of BiH, as Foreign Minister Elmedin Konaković said, pushed into the EU as some kind of Croatian part of the Balkan Cyprus.

With this move, the OHR has definitively resolved the dilemma, if there was any, and clearly sided with the policies that want to turn the Constitutional Court into a paralyzed institution that will not be able to make decisions preventing the disintegration of this country in the coming period.

In the end, the question remains whether Bosniaks will realize this before Schmidt finishes the job or after the division of BiH!