Bosnia’s Serb Entity Republika Srpska Steps Up Secession Efforts – News18

Lawmakers in Bosnia’s Serb entity on Tuesday voted to suspend recognition of rulings made by the Balkan nation’s constitutional court, in a move that will likely inflame ethnic tensions in the deeply divided country.

The 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.

Dodik initiated the vote following the constitutional court’s decision last week that altered the judicial body’s rules, allowing it to convene without Serb judges present.

The court’s decision came after the Bosnian parliament refused to fill a vacancy on the judicial body’s bench.

“The constitutional court violates the constitution massively. It is completely delegitimized and led itself to the point of absurdity,” Dodik said ahead of Tuesday’s vote.

The vote was immediately slammed by the US embassy in the capital Sarajevo, which said the legislation threatened to undermine the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords — a landmark agreement that ended the country’s civil war.

“This is foolish and irresponsible, but it is certainly consistent with Mr. Dodik’s other efforts to deprive Republika Srpska residents of their fundamental freedoms of press, speech, and assembly,” read a statement posted on the US Embassy’s official Twitter account, referring to Bosnia’s Serb entity.

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.

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.

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – AFP)