Constitutional crisis shakes Bosnia
The national assembly of Bosnia's Serb-controlled Republika Srpska on Thursday adopted the draft of the new Republic Constitution, introduced by the autonomous republic's president, Milorad Dodik, that includes articles that violate Bosnia's constitution.
Bosnian state prosecutors on Wednesday had ordered the arrest of Dodik and his aides for ignoring a court summons for allegedly trying to undermine Bosnia's constitution. Republika Srpska is an entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Last month, a Bosnian court sentenced Dodik to one year in prison and banned him from politics for six years over his separatist activities and for defying decisions by the international High Representative that oversees the 1995 Dayton Accords.
That agreement ended an ethnically rooted war that lasted more than three years and killed 100,000 people.
Dodik rejected the arrest warrant, telling journalists in the regional capital, Banja Luka, on Wednesday that it was politically motivated and that he would ask Russia to veto an extension of the presence of EUFOR, the European Union's peacekeeping force in Bosnia, at the U.N. Security Council.
In an interview Thursday with VOA's Bosnian Service, Dodik's lawyer, Anto Nobilo, said Dodik does not recognize either the Bosnian court or state prosecutor's office, and thus does not need legal defense.
"I do not believe there will be Dodik's arrest," Nobilo said. "Mr. Dodik will not cooperate, or name his defense team, because he does not consider the proceedings legitimate. ... Bosnia needs this situation defused immediately. This is a huge constitutional and legal and political crisis and has to be resolved politically."
Nenad Stevandic, president of Republika Srpska's national assembly and a close ally of Dodik, denounced the moves against the Serb-controlled autonomous republic as an attack on the constitutional order.
"We are absolutely right," he said Wednesday. "However, to be right in Bosnia and Herzegovina means to be persecuted."
Meanwhile, in Washington, three members of the U.S. Senate — Chuck Grassley, Jeanne Shaheen and Jim Risch — led a group of nine other members of the U.S. Congress in calling on Secretary of State Marco Rubio to prevent further deterioration in Bosnia.
"We are deeply concerned about the recent actions of Milorad Dodik, the leader of the Republika Srpska entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina," they wrote in a letter to Rubio. "For years, he has engaged in secessionist activity, challenging Bosnia and Herzegovina's state institutions, undermining the constitution and threatening the territorial integrity of the country."
The U.S. imposed sanctions on Dodik and his "patronage network" in 2023 and again in January of this year.
Asked by VOA while en route Monday to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, if the U.S. was considering "any punitive action against Dodik," Rubio said the Trump administration did not want to see a partition of Bosnia.
"The last thing the world needs is another crisis, and we've spoken out about that already," he said. "As far as what we maybe do next, we're reviewing those options. But it's been abundantly clear that whatever differences may exist internally there, this cannot lead to a country breaking apart, and it cannot lead to another conflict."
Experts say the actions of Dodik and the Republika Srpska national assembly have precipitated Bosnia's most serious constitutional crisis since 1995.
"First of all, it is a reflection of [Dodik's] disrespect for fundamental state institutions, meaning, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and all those fundamental postulates on which the constitutional-legal order rests," Milos Davidovic, professor of law at the University of Sarajevo, told VOA's Bosnian Service.
Ahmed Kico, a political and security expert, told VOA the actions of Dodik and the Republika Srpska national assembly were among "hybrid operations … realized at the behest of the Russian Federation and Serbia … therefore, it is a really dangerous situation where they are trying to show and prove that Bosnia and Herzegovina's survival is not possible as a democratic state."
Amid the growing crisis, additional European peacekeepers arrived in Bosnia on Wednesday to bolster those of EUFOR.
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