Top judicial official: I have obligations toward Republika Srpska

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The head of Bosnia’s top judicial institution would not directly say on Thursday whether he would join representatives from the country’s Serb-majority region in blocking state institutions as was announced the day before, but he did say that he had “obligations” toward the region since he is a representative of it as well.

Tegeltija is the head of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC), the institution that oversees the work of all of Bosnia’s courts.

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The President of the semi-autonomous Bosnian entity of Republika Srpska (RS), Zeljka Cvijanovic, announced on Wednesday that all RS representatives in state institutions would stop participating in decision-making processes and block the institutions until a law that would remove the foreign judges from Bosnia’s Constitutional Court is adopted.

The move came after the Constitutional Court declared an RS property law unconstitutional.

“The official institutions of Republika Srpska have still not made an official decision so I still have nothing to comment or say,” Tegeltija said.

But he then went on to explain that he is a representative of the RS in the HJPC, as he is a member of the RS sub-council there which was created through a transfer of competencies from the entities.

“All this taken into account, I am a representative of the RS and I have obligations toward Republika Srpska,” Tegeltija said.