Christian Schmidt, the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, speaks during a news conference held by the Office of the High Representative (OHR) as he announces his decision to intervene into criminal laws and Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to maintain full capacity of county's Constitutional Court, in Sarajevo, on July 1, 2023. (Photo by ELVIS BARUKCIC / AFP)
Sarajevo: The High Representative for Bosnia, Christian Schmidt, on Saturday annulled controversial rulings by Bosnia's Serb entity refusing to recognise the decisions of the Balkan nation's Constitutional Court.
Lawmakers in Bosnia's Serb entity on Tuesday voted to suspend recognition of rulings made by the Constitutional Court, in a move that was likely to inflame ethnic tensions in the deeply divided country.
Tuesday's vote was the latest in a series of inflammatory political moves engineered by Bosnia's Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who has long campaigned for secession from the country's central institutions.
On June 21, the Republika Srpska (RS) parliament also adopted a law designed to render inapplicable in this Bosnian Serb entity the decisions taken by the International High Representative, whose role is to ensure compliance with the Dayton peace agreement that put an end to the intercommunity war in the country in 1995.
Bosnia has been governed by a dysfunctional administrative system created by the Dayton agreement that succeeded in ending the conflict in the 1990s but largely failed in providing a framework for the country's political development.
In accordance with the agreement, Bosnia has been divided into two bodies -- a Muslim-Croat federation and a Serb entity, known as Republika Srpska. The two entities are connected by a weak central government.
Schmidt, a German politician, used his special powers under the Dayton agreement to annul the Serb entity's two recent decisions which have provoked strong reactions particularly from Bosnian Muslim leaders, some of whom saw them as a direct threat to peace in Bosnia.
The Serb entity's initiatives have also been criticised by Washington, Paris and Berlin.
"The recent decisions taken by the Assembly of Republika Srpska represent a direct violation of the constitutional order of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and also of the Dayton peace agreement," Schmidt told a press conference in Sarajevo.
He specified that, therefore, the laws adopted would not come into force.
Dodik -- who remains a Kremlin ally -- has held enormous sway over Bosnia's Serb entity for years and has frequently stoked ethnic tensions and threatened to secede from the Balkan country's institutions.
He said on Friday that the RS "will not withdraw" its decisions, adding that any decision or sanction by the High Representative would not be respected in the Serbian entity.
"As far as Schmidt is concerned, his decisions are worthless. They will not be applied," he told a press conference.
