Milorad Dodik has announced the holding of a referendum in Republika Srpska (RS) on the (non)acceptance of the verdict of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), by which he was sentenced to a ban on political activity. However, such a move is merely “throwing dust in the eyes” because essentially, even if he carried it out, the referendum would have no force in relation to a final verdict.
On Wednesday, Dodik, in response to the decision of the Central Election Commission (CEC) on the termination of his mandate, announced a referendum in the RS on whether Milorad Dodik should accept that his mandate as president has been taken away.
Regardless of how the referendum question would be formulated and what it would address, the fact remains that a final verdict must be enforced and that no referendum can overturn a punishment for committing a criminal offense.
The president of the People’s Front also agrees that the referendum is “needed by Dodik and his team only in a demonstrative sense to show that they do not accept the verdict,” but that the government in fact has no idea what to do next.
“You know that in 2016 a referendum was held on RS Day, which the Constitutional Court of BiH declared unconstitutional, that the people said that this decision must not be implemented, and that the government then implemented such a decision of the Constitutional Court by deleting January 9th as RS Day from the Law on Holidays of RS, while declaring the referendum an ordinary survey,” said Trivic.
If anything shows that Dodik is lacking political moves, it is the occasional announcements of referendums, with which he tries to make noise and with which he has been tiring us for years, even though he never carries out any of them in the end.
Given that Dodik currently finds himself in a difficult situation where he must choose between stepping down from office or committing new criminal acts, more empty threats and attempts to raise political tensions can be expected.
Supporting the claim that the RS leadership uses empty political moves are also the calls from DNS and NPS to state officials to withdraw from BiH institutions. Such a call is essentially an already-seen, failed attempt, which Dodik used after the first-instance verdict, when the National Assembly of RS (NARS)passed a law criminalizing work in four state institutions.
Dodik essentially only needs to appear to the public as if he is not giving up, but in reality, he has few options other than to acknowledge the verdict and step down from office, given that non-compliance with court verdicts is also a criminal offense, which is not in his interest at all.
He can repeat in front of the cameras countless times that he does not recognize the verdict, but he will not dare to sign anything as president of the RS without committing a criminal offense, nor would such a decision by the RS President’s institution be valid.
That this is a case of deceiving the public is also shown by the fact that he has already officially accepted the verdict, given that he sent a request to the Court of BiH to convert his prison sentence into a fine. Therefore, there is no argument for refusing to accept the second part of the sentence, which concerns the ban on performing the function of president of the RS.
An appeal to the Constitutional Court of BiH, which Dodik paradoxically does not recognize, has also been announced. If that appeal is rejected, Dodik will only be at risk of committing yet another criminal offense, which is the non-implementation of the decisions of the Constitutional Court of BiH.
Also, if he were to attempt to carry out the referendum he announced, he could not do so easily without entering into a “clash” with the Constitutional Court of BiH, given that that court has previously annulled similar attempts.
