The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has annulled several laws adopted by the National Assembly of the Republic of Srpska, including those on the register of non-profit organizations, the ban on the operation of extra-constitutional institutions of BiH, and the law on the entity-level High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC).
Professor of constitutional law Milan Blagojević emphasizes that the public in Bosnia and Herzegovina has already been informed that the BiH Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation against suspects Milorad Dodik, Radovan Višković, and Nenad Stevandić shortly after the controversial laws were adopted in the RS National Assembly at the end of February.
“And that is because of the criminal offense of attacking the constitutional order, which, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, was committed precisely by passing those laws that the Constitutional Court of BiH has now annulled. That investigation is still ongoing, and as you know, at the request of the Prosecutor’s Office, the Court of BiH has already ordered the detention of the three suspects due to the risk of flight. The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina then issued an order for their apprehension and issued a central arrest warrant for them due to these criminal offenses,” Blagojević recalls.
He emphasizes that the adoption of “the law on the non-implementation of laws and the prohibition of the activities of SIPA, the BiH Prosecutor’s Office, the Court of BiH, and the HJPC of BiH clearly violated the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as such laws are contrary to the BiH Constitution.”
Đorđe Vučinić, a member of the Justice and Order List in the National Assembly of the Republic of Srpska (NSRS), says that he had pointed out from the very beginning that the adoption of the laws was a major fraud and deception of the citizens of the Republic of Srpska.
“It is not possible, within these constitutional and legal frameworks, to adopt such laws. And it is not possible for those same laws to be implemented, not even for a minute. Therefore, even without this decision of the Constitutional Court of BiH to annul those laws, we essentially never had those laws in force. That’s why a milder reaction from the ruling coalition was expected, because in reality, they have suffered a defeat and a slap from reality, which, in my opinion and as I had predicted, was absolutely expected and just part of normal procedure,” says Vučinić.
Reactions to the decision of the Constitutional Court of BiH also came from the SNSD, but they were nowhere near as loud as before. The head of the SNSD caucus in the RS National Assembly, Srđan Mazalica, says that the Court is acting in the interest of only one ethnic group and a political agenda.
“Even within RS, people are starting to understand the reality—that this is, in fact, a fight against windmills. This is a battle between an individual and the state,” says analyst and psychologist Ibrahim Prohić.
Vučinić adds that all of this was just a game of brinkmanship and marketing for the crowd.
Written by our correspondent D.I.
