Bosnia’s Constitution has been gravely violated by the country’s international administrators who took away competencies from the country’s semi-autonomous entities and transferred them to the state level and attempts to legalise this through Constitutional changes will not succeed, the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency, Milorad Dodik, told N1 on Thursday.
Dodik’s statement came after the US Ambassador in the country, Eric Nelson, called for reforming the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement and its Annexe IV, which is Bosnia’s Constitution.
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Dodik argued that changes to the Constitution can be implemented but that this must be a result of a consensus between the two semi-autonomous entities in the country, Republika Srpska (RS) and the Federation (FBiH), as well as between the three constituent peoples, Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs.
He said that “other Americans” had similar initiatives to change the Constitution.
“I know Nelson and I concluded that he did not argue that they (Americans) should be leading this process, but we in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” he said, arguing that any “modelling” by foreigners should be rejected.
“There is a Constitution, it is as it is. It’s part of international law and the peacebuilding concept (…),” he said.
Bosnia’s war ended with a peace agreement that divided the country into two semi-autonomous entities, one for the Bosnian Serbs and the other shared by Bosniaks and Croats. The two are linked into a country by a joint government, parliament and presidency but Dodik has been complaining that too often the High Representatives – international administrators tasked with overseeing the civilian implementation of the Dayton Agreement – imposed laws or decisions that undermined the autonomy of the entities and always favoured a stronger state.
Many of their decisions violated the peace agreement as they transferred some of the authorities from the entities to the central government, he argued.
“Those who think they can legalise the robbery by the High Representative and the violence they committed by imposing solutions, robbing entities and transferring (competencies) to the joint (state) level are gravely mistaken,” he said.
There is “a massive violation of rights and the Constitution,” he said, arguing that the Constitution should first have been implemented in the country and then changed.
“Not changed through decisions of the Constitutional Court and the High Representative. That is illegitimate. The High Representative had no right to do that,” he said.
He said that the Bonn Powers, which enable High Representatives to fire officials and impose laws, represent an “international manipulation” and called those who served the post in Bosnia “international criminals.”
“How is it possible for someone to impose a (state level) Court, Prosecutor’s Office, SIPA (state police), Intelligence Agency? We keep enduring this,” he said.
“I’m not prepared to change my basic stances. Bosnia and Herzegovina can function according to the original Dayton Constitution, parts of which should be reformed,” he said.
He added that rule of law should be ensured primarily by ensuring respect for Bosnia’s current Constitution, which he argued the High Representatives and Constitutional Court had violated.
