Either political leaders will come to a new agreement on what the Constitutional Court should look like or Bosnia will be no more, Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik said on Wednesday after representatives from the country’s Serb-majority region unanimously decided to stop participating in any decision-making processes until all foreign judges are removed from the Court.
The decision, which was announced by the President of the semi-autonomous Republika Srpska (RS) region, came after the Constitutional Court recently ruled an RS law on property unconstitutional.
RELATED NEWS
The law said that all agricultural land located on RS territory is the property of the entity. The state Constitutional Court, however, struck down the law and said the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina should be the owner of such land.
Dodik has been arguing for years that Bosnia’s Constitutional Court is working against Bosnian Serb interests.
The Court is composed of nine judges – two Bosniaks, two Serbs, two Croats and three foreign judges. Dodik has been accusing the foreign judges of agreeing with the Bosniak judges too often.
He called the Constitutional court an “occupation court” for the RS.
“We have agreed that we will not be involved in making any decisions on any issue within Bosnia’s institutions, and we will not give up on that,” he said, adding that RS lawmakers will meet on Monday and adopt a series of decisions on the matter.
“We believe that the judges should leave the Constitutional Court, and if they don’t, the RS National Assembly which named them (the Serb judges) will adopt a decision to remove them from the court,” he said.
“So, we simply either have to come to a new agreement or this country will be no more,” he stressed.
