Sarajevo indulges Čović while Dodik continues with separatism

Amina Čorbo Zećo

At yesterday's press conference, the member of the BiH Presidency, Milorad Dodik, said that he would continue with the policy of returning competencies to the level of the Republika Srpska.

Despite the new sanctions imposed on Dodik by the United States, but also in face of the speculation about the possibility for the European Union member states and Great Britain to do the same, Dodik continues his policy.

In practical terms, this means that Dodik, through the RS National Assembly, will suspend the competence of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the RS entity in the coming months.

The seizure of that competence, as well as others, cannot pass without the armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, because in that case the pro-Bosnian part of the government, with the use of legal state institutions, must prevent an attack on the BiH Armed Forces.

Because, it is undoubtedly an anti-Dayton activity and the OHR must react, as the High Representative Christian Schmidt said himself recently.

However, yesterday's announcement of Dodik's continued seizure of authority from the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina was overshadowed by the insults Dodik directed at the international officials, but also by a kind of political sedative that Dodik gave to the naive pro-Bosnian public about his alleged return to institutions.

Only politically naive people can believe in Aleksandar Vučić’s good intentions and his pleas to Dodik and the SNSD to return to BiH institutions.

It is dangerous to believe that enraged Dodik will work in the institutions of BiH for the benefit of the state of BiH, and for its territorial and sovereign integrity.

Dodik will return to the institutions, temporarily, but only for the sake of helping a new offensive related to changes to the BiH Election Law, which he himself announced yesterday, saying he would support the ‘Bosniaks and Croats’ agreement.

In recent days, Patria wrote about how the new round of negotiations on changes to the BiH Election Law was nothing but buying time for Dodik's secessionism, and we also warned about the activities of the head of the EU Delegation to BiH Johan Sattler who was trying hard to return the case of the election law onto the agenda, while at the same time keeping silent about the agreements of his boss Oliver Várhelyi with Milorad Dodik on holding special sessions of the NSRS at which anti-constitutional conclusions were reached that could push this country into another conflict.

We were able to see yesterday that Serbia and Croatia are under Russian influence, and that they are bound by unbreakable ties. That they help each other, we can read from the statements of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said after a meeting with Croatian Minister Gordan Grlić Radman that there is discrimination against Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina and that he insists on respecting the Dayton Accords and implementing electoral reform.

‘We, too, see obvious discrimination against Bosnian Croats, which the Croatian minister spoke about’, Lavrov said in Moscow.

During that time, the Chairman of the Presidency of BiH, Željko Komšić, was in Vatican, where it was clearly stated that every citizen must be respected, more precisely, the legal and social equality of all citizens who belong to each of the constituent peoples must be a priority.

Therefore, the processes of dissolution and amendments to the Election Law are related processes, and the state of BiH loses the most because of them. Russia's support for the reforms clearly indicates that.

However, there may not be a conflict after all, because in such circumstances, a peaceful dissolution of the state is quite possible. Dodik also knows that, and while he continues to seize the competencies of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and announces that he will not stop doing that, he shifts the focus of the political discussion to changes in the BiH Election Law.

Dodik has found a way to the peaceful dissolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He can deal with secession in a peaceful way, while Sarajevo is busy indulging Dragan Čović. To great satisfaction of Russia and fascists.