President of the Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) entity of the Republika Srpska (RS), Milorad Dodik again yesterday made groundless claims that BiH does not have sovereignty and that it is the territory of two entities and that there is no territory of BiH without the territorial sovereignty of the RS and the Federation of BiH (FBiH).
Dodik said that “BiH does not have sovereignty because sovereignty is given to entities and it only has a part of derived sovereignty”.
“According to the Constitution of BiH, the entities have exclusive jurisdiction over finance, judiciary, army, police, border service and all other state competences that are not expressly given to the level of BiH by the Constitution of BiH. Even what is under the jurisdiction of the Presidency of BiH as the executive authority under the Constitution of BiH, in the case of over-voting the ‘Serbian member of the BiH Presidency’, the final decision after the veto is made by the National Assembly of RS (NARS) with a two-thirds majority. If the NARS revokes that decision of the BiH Presidency, it is declared null and void as if it never existed,” Dodik claims.
In his opinion, this shows “the primacy of entity sovereignty over BiH”.
“All the competences that reflect the statehood of a territory belong to the entities, and everything that was transferred to the level of BiH, either by the Office of the High Representative (OHR) or by fraud for decision-making in the Parliamentary Assembly, is actually unconstitutional and therefore temporary. Entities are states that “transferred part of their sovereignty to the level of BiH, while BiH is actually a state community or, more precisely, a community of states – the RS and the FBiH. This is according to the Constitution of BiH, and everything else is the result of unconstitutional actions,” stated Dodik.
This statement by Dodik, although completely unfounded, is a reaction to the position of Denis Becirovic, a member of the BiH Presidency, which he gave on the occasion of the visit of the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, to the leadership of the RS.
Becirovic then said that Serbia is obliged to respect the sovereignty of BiH.
He reminded that the Constitution of BiH, which is an integral part of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in BiH, stated the following: “Entities have the right to establish parallel relations with neighboring states, in accordance with the sovereignty and territorial integrity of BiH (Article III-2 ( a)”.
”It clearly follows from the cited constitutional provision that parallel relations must be in accordance with the sovereignty and territorial integrity of BiH. The BiH entity RS is obliged to consistently respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state of BiH, just like neighboring Serbia,” said Becirovic, Klix.ba reports.
E.Dz.
