We will enter into a new crisis if we have to, but we will not succumb to pressure from the Republika Srpska (RS) entity, Bosniak leader Bakir Izetbegovic said Thursday commenting the announced boycott of the decision-making process at the state level after the Constitutional Court found two laws from this entity unconstitutional.
“We will not succumb under this pressure. Politicians in the tried to usurp the land (that belongs to the State of Bosnia and Herzegovina) and following our appeal, the Constitutional Court defended that land, and now they want us to weaken this Court so their future decisions would not be rejected by the Court. We won't allow that,” Deputy Speaker of the House of Peoples, Bakir Izetbegovic said.
He said that the authorities in this Serb-dominated semi-autonomous entity are trying only to take what they like, from the government and the rule of law. What they do not like, Izetbegovic noted, they try to get rid of so they would achieve the domination of one entity over the state.
“We will not allow that and we will enter a new crisis if we have to. The Constitution and the rule of law will be respected in this country. We lost a whole year in attacks against the rule of law – for nothing,” Izetbegovic stressed.
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He concluded that those causing crises in the country are also harming their own people and those voting for them.
On Wednesday, the RS leadership announced they would not take part in the decision-making process at the state level. The whole thing began after several Bosniak MPs in the RS parliament filed an appeal to the Constitutional Court against the RS Law on Agricultural Land and the RS Law on Inland Navigation, stating that the RS is usurping state competencies and taking the land which belongs to the state.
The Court ruled in favour of the Bosniak MPs’ motion, declaring several articles from those laws unconstitutional.
Following the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement which ended the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, the country was subdivided into two semi-autonomous entities – the Bosniak-Croat shared Federation and the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska. Each entity has its own competencies and parliaments and each entity makes its own laws which must be in line with the state Constitution.
