CONSTITUTIONAL COURT FAILED TO PREVENT INTERNATIONALIZATION OF BiH’S LEGAL DISGRACE

BELGRADE, NOVEMBER 4 /SRNA/ – Lawyer Goran Petronijević told SRNA that by rejecting the appeal filed by the defense of President Milorad Dodik against the verdict of the Court of BiH, the Constitutional Court of BiH missed the opportunity to prevent the internationalization of what he called BiH’s "legal disgrace," which, he said, is now inevitable.

"We now have to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Then everyone will learn what has been happening and how in BiH," Petronijević said. He emphasized that only in BiH could such a legal absurdity occur at the beginning of the 21st century. "An individual adopts laws without any legal authority to even hold the position he claims, replaces and suspends the highest representative and legislative bodies, invents legal provisions and applies them retroactively to convict someone who needed to be politically eliminated. That is the entire process that preceded the verdict. One should look at how that verdict came to be," Petronijević pointed out. He said he had no optimism regarding a different decision from the Constitutional Court of BiH, given its existing issues and the fact that the court is not composed in line with the Dayton Peace Accords, specifically Annex Four, and that it is incomplete because there are no judges from Republika Srpska. "All of that pointed to this kind of outcome," he said. He added that the situation would have been different “if the judges sitting in the Constitutional Court of BiH had even a bit of integrity and common sense to finally apply the Constitution and the law.” Commenting on today’s decision by the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH to drop the investigation against Dodik, the Speaker of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska Nenad Stevandić, and former Prime Minister Radovan Višković over an alleged attack on the constitutional order, Petronijević said this could be seen as a sign that Sarajevo’s political circles are slowly realizing that “the atmosphere is changing and that the wine no longer costs what it once did.” "In other words, that the U.S. has changed its stance and that the American administration is gradually realizing — as we also saw in the UN Security Council — who the main factors of destabilization in this region really are. That it is, in fact, Christian Schmidt, with his false representation, misuse of authority, so-called Bonn powers, and those who supported him," Petronijević emphasized. He reiterated that the fact that the Constitutional Court of BiH is involved in matters previously decided by Christian Schmidt represents, in essence, a serious conflict of jurisdiction, even if not formally so. "Why? Because the Constitutional Court of BiH and Christian Schmidt have been the left and right hands of all those neoliberal globalists who tried to forcibly centralize BiH and dismantle Republika Srpska — and very likely to further undermine the position of Croats in the other entity as well," he said. The incomplete Constitutional Court of BiH today rejected the appeal filed by the defense of President Milorad Dodik against the verdict of the Court of BiH, which sentenced him to one year in prison and banned him from political activity for six years for "failing to comply with the decisions of Christian Schmidt." At its extraordinary session, the incomplete Constitutional Court also considered and rejected as unfounded the appeal against the August 6 decision of the BiH Central Election Commission. Members of President Dodik’s legal team announced that an appeal will follow before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.