Croatian President Zoran Milanović, commenting on the indictment against the President of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik, said that the high representative of the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina is using his powers to protect himself, and when those same powers should be used to protect the rights of a nation in that country, then there is no time.
Milanović pointed out that Christian Schmidt changes the laws as he wants and asked where he was a year ago when he could change the Election Law of Bosnia and Herzegovina without violating the Dayton Constitution and prevent Bosniaks from electing a Croatian member of the Presidency.
He assessed that the high representative, in order to protect his reputation, changed the criminal law according to which what Dodik did was a criminal offense.
“It’s called colonial administration and it’s destroying that country,” Milanović told reporters, reports Hina.
Milanović said of Schmidt that “he is a retired German politician who left behind an insignificant trace, that someone “installed him as a colonial administrator in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, that he does not have a mandate from the UN Security Council and that behind his moves are “some embassies in to that country,” apostrophizing the American one.
Milanović said that Dodik called him on Friday to inform him about the indictment.
“Is this a way of calming down the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, of de-escalation,” Milanović asked, adding that he “will continue to call on all the factors of this area, Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks, to talk without those colonial administrators.”
On Friday, the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina filed an indictment against the President of the RS, Milorad Dodik, for disobeying the decisions of the high representative of the international community, and for this criminal offense, if he is found guilty, he faces a sentence ranging from six months to five years in prison.
A special law adopted by the RS parliament in June blocked the implementation of the judgments of the Constitutional Court of BiH, and that law was annulled by the High Representative for BiH, on July 1, using his powers.
At the same time, he imposed changes to the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which treat non-implementation of decisions of the Constitutional Court as a criminal offense.
Dodik ignored the High Representative’s decision and on July 7 signed the decree on the entry into force of the law on blocking the implementation of the judgments of the Constitutional Court, reports Tanjug.