The year 2023 is also passing with the feeling that it is difficult to talk about the existence of legal security, fairness or justice in BiH. The examples or arguments are not new, which means that in BiH there are no conditions to respect what is written in the constitutions and laws, and not even to correct what was wrongly done earlier.
As expected, C. Schmidt continued to falsely present himself as a high representative this year, contrary to the provisions of the Dayton Peace Agreement. The legal uncertainty caused by this has taken on such dimensions that people in BiH must no longer believe that the real laws are published in the Official Gazette of BiH or that the laws passed by assemblies have the force they should have. BiH, supposedly a sovereign member of the UN, is facing a request from C. Schmidt to try the President of Republika Srpska M. Dodik and the director of the Official Gazette of Republika Srpska M. Lukić for their constitutional actions, which Schmidt considers disrespecting his personal will. A prison sentence and a ban on the President of Republika Srpska from working are requested from the court. You read that right, ultimately not to M. Dodik, but to the President of Republika Srpska! It is difficult to imagine that anyone can prevent M. Dodik from political work, because according to everything, in the case of a guilty verdict, that work will be even more active, but the verdict would send a clear message to anyone who holds the position of the Republika Srpska President that he can engage in political work only as a henchman of C. Schmidt or someone similar to him. C. Schmidt did not only attack the constitutional order of Republika Srpska. In the usurpation spree this year, the constitutional order of BiH was again attacked – new false laws, the introduction of armed groups into the country… All this was determined by the competent authorities of BiH.
The Constitutional Court of BiH should be the guarantor of real security and the final instance of protection of our rights, but this protection cannot be expected. For a couple of decades, there has been an open campaign to destroy the Dayton Peace Agreement, and our human and civil rights are the first to suffer on that path. This year, after the analysis of the court’s decisions, it was also seen that the judges who decided on the so-called state property and referred to the Agreement on succession issues, they did not read that agreement at all. In their decisions, they did not know exactly where the agreement was published, or they cited the wrong numbers of the Official Gazette of BiH! It took them a decade to find an agreement and realize that it is not in the numbers 43/01, 22/01, as they repeatedly stated, but in 10/01! In the meantime, on the political orders of the three presidents of the SDA, the majority in the Constitutional Court of BiH created chaos. Especially in the field of economy, because the blocking of assets stopped the development of the entire BiH. What else can you expect from the Constitutional Court of BiH, which has a wrong translation of the Constitution of BiH on its website for more than a decade! Among other mistakes in Article VI/1.d), and in connection with the passing of the law according to which foreign judges would be replaced by domestic ones, in their translation it was incorrectly written “a different way of electing three judges chosen by the president”, and not as it should be “a different method of selection of three judges chosen by the president”. The wrong translation serves as an argument for the opponents of the adoption of the new law that foreign judges cannot be changed without changing the Constitution of BiH?! Fortunately, the original in English can be viewed on ohr.int, and the corresponding translation, among other things, on the official website of the Faculty of Law of the University of Sarajevo, NDC Sarajevo, etc.
All in all, in this country and this year, laws, fairness and justice continue to speak to themselves, and what is pleasing to the ear can be called Justice’s soliloquy in BiH.
Republika Srpska, proverbially still the main target of such disrespect of the Dayton Peace Agreement and the Constitution of BiH by foreigners and the majority of judges of the now truncated Constitutional Court of BiH, has finally drawn the line since 2023. Very symbolically, but also clearly, it called for THERE IS A LIMIT. I have the impression that next year, 2024, we will have the opportunity to see how strong this limit is.
Author: Lawyer Ognjen Tadić
The Srpska Times
