Another tightening of political relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the announcement of an internal crisis, another secession, another American warning. It seems, this is a crisis without coverage, but with a tightening of relations.
State property in BiH has been a subject of dispute since 2004, when the Peace Implementation Council (PIC) ordered the local authorities to resolve the issue of state property. The then High Representative Paddy Ashdown didn’t wait long, so only a year later he regulated this area by imposing a law on the disposal of state property, so that it would not be registered by the entities. This cemented situation lasted until 2012, when the negotiations of the then “six” began, consisting of Milorad Dodik (SNSD), Sulejman Tihic (SDA), Dragan Covic (HDZ BiH), Mladen Bosic (SDS), Bozo Ljubic (HDZ 1990) and Zlatko Lagumdzija (SDP).
The issue of state property is currently causing the most political crises. The last one refers to the withdrawal of Serbian representatives from the state parliament, because a few days ago the pro-Bosnian parties signed a statement in which, among other things, they refer to the decisions of the Constitutional Court of BiH and the state as the sole owner of state property.
However, this caused a new disagreement with Serbian political representatives who are looking for an answer to this, as theycall it, provocation. “It is a pure attack on the property of the Republika Srpska (RS),” says Mladen Bosic (SDS), a representative in the BiH Parliament, which led to the withdrawal of other Serbian representatives as well.
Policing on the inter-entity line and the “disassociation” offer
They came to Banja Luka for answers, where a proposal for “independence of the RS within BiH” was already prepared as a response to this statement. Nevertheless, BiH received a protective mechanism for each of the three nations in the Dayton Agreement in order to avoid overvoting, better known as entity interest. This means that no document, be it a statement or a law, can gain legal force if it is not supported by the representatives of all three nations. To that question, the president of the RS and the first man of the SNSD, Milorad Dodik, answers: “It is exactly the matrix that we hear from Sarajevo and from foreigners that you just sit there, so you can. Yes, but this is about titling. This is about property. The one who legally arranges the property belongs to him. BiH cannot arrange it because it does not own the property,” said Dodik.
This was also defended by a part of the opposition led by SDS, which sees joint action on this issue not as cooperation with the authorities but as defense of the RS. Serbian representatives determined the draft of the statement that goes before the National Assembly. In addition to self-determination, the deepening of the crisis is on the table. “Let’s schedule the National Assembly at the end of next week and make a decision on the withdrawal of judges from the Constitutional Court of BiH,” said Dodik after the meeting of Serbian party leaders, announcing further moves.
“That a special service be formed within the Ministry of Internal Affairs that will deal with the issue of the border between the two entities and the supervision of that border. We have agreed that, if all this does not bear fruit, at some point when we evaluate everything together again, we will offer the Federation an agreement on disunification,” said Dodik.
Murphy: Dodik took a dangerous path
Just a day before, the American warning arrives that any talk of secession will not be tolerated and that it is not possible. The United States (U.S.) Ambassador to BiH, Michael Murphy, tells Dodik that he “took a dangerous path”.
Three years of outsmarting
In 2020, the Constitutional Court of BiH ruled on the request of seven delegates of the People’s Council of the RS for the review of the constitutionality of Article 53 of the Law on Agricultural Land of the RS, which stipulates that “the agricultural land in question, which by its nature is a public good, i.e. state property, by force of law becomes the property and possession of RS”. The court found that it is the exclusive competence of BiH in regulating the issue of state property.
After that, the RS adopted its law on property, according to which the RS has the possibility to register about 400 objects from the official list of state property. High Representative Christian Schmidt stood in their way, and he overturned the law. After that, another one was adopted in the National Assembly, which was also annulled. And all of this refers to objects that are the subject of the Law on the Prohibition of Disposing of State Property of BiH, which was imposed in 2005 by the then High Representative Paddy Ashdown, DW reports.
