Today, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) will deliver a verdict to Milorad Dodik, the president of Republika Srpska (RS), who has announced that he will take radical steps if the verdict is a conviction. However, how inconsistent he is with everything he announces and says is best shown by the fact that his rhetoric now differs from what he used to say years ago.
Namely, in one of the interviews Dodik gave after the war, he criticized the then-leaders of the Bosnian Serbs.
“Now an entire people are suffering both in RS and in Serbia because some Mladic or Karadzic decided not to surrender and come to court, and then he says he loves the Serbian people – hell you do,” Dodik said at the time.
From this statement, it is clear that Dodik separated the people from the actions of political leaders simply by emphasizing that an entire community should not bear the consequences of individuals.
Moreover, in this sentence, Dodik also mentioned the failure to appear in court of convicted war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, and yet he himself will not do the same today when his verdict is read at the Court of BiH.
He said that he has the right not to attend the reading of the first-instance verdict and has also called on his supporters to come to his two-day rally organized in his support in Banja Luka.
This very message to the people and the call for such gatherings show that Dodik is actually dragging the entity of RS and its residents into the judicial process against him, which demonstrates that his statements are hypocritical and changeable whenever it suits him.
It is important to emphasize that Dodik seeks to present his own actions as part of a collective identity, hiding behind RS.
As part of his defense, he has repeatedly stated that, as the president of RS, he was obligated to sign the decree on the entry into force of the law adopted by the National Assembly of RS (NARS).
This law, in essence, stipulates that the decisions of High Representative Christian Schmidt will not be implemented, which further means they will not be published in the Official Gazette of RS.
He also emphasized that in some other situation, he would be accountable before the judiciary of RS, which “falls apart” because the competencies of the entity cannot be placed above those of the state, and RS is obliged to respect the decisions of the High Representative.
It is precisely because of the publication of this decree that he and Milos Lukic, the former acting director of the Official Gazette of RS, have been on trial for more than a year before the Court of BiH.
Still, it could be said that Dodik is grasping at straws by proposing such radical moves – “RS secession,” withdrawal from state institutions, etc. – all in an attempt to use fear to “win over” the people to support him and to put pressure on the judiciary regarding the verdict.
Regardless of all the above, it must be clearly stated that Dodik is an individual personally responsible for the actions for which he is on trial, and in no way are the people or the entity of RS connected to this.
The changing rhetoric and words throughout his political career speak volumes about the consistency and truthfulness of his actions, Klix.ba writes.
