DODIK MAY BE CANDIDATE FOR ANY OFFICES EXCEPT REPUBLIKA SRPSKA PRESIDENT

BANJA LUKA, JUNE 7 /SRNA/ – Academician Vitomir Popović believes there are serious legal arguments that Milorad Dodik may run for any offices except that of Republika Srpska president, because that prohibition is the only one explicitly stated in the operative part of the court judgment.

It is true, Popović pointed out, that certain legal provisions stipulate that the legal consequences of a conviction arise automatically by force of law. “However, my legal position has always been that only those consequences clearly contained in the operative part, i.e. the ruling section of the judgment, can produce legal effect. Nothing that is not stated in the operative part can by itself be binding,” said Popović, a university professor and doctor of legal sciences. According to him, every verdict is a separate legal act and, therefore, all important legal consequences must be precisely stated on order not to leave room for different interpretations and legal uncertainty. In this specific case, he noted, there are two opposing legal viewpoints. “According to the first, only what is stated in the operative part of the judgment produces legal consequences. Since the legal consequences of the conviction are not stated in the operative part, it can be argued that they did not take effect. The second viewpoint is based on the provisions of Articles 113, 114, 115 and 203a of the Criminal Code of BiH and holds that the legal consequences of a conviction arise automatically, by force of law, on the day the judgment becomes final,” Popović said. He believes there is a serious legal argument in favour of the first viewpoint, adding that Article 203a prescribes the types of legal consequences but does not prescribe their duration. At the same time, he stressed, the court did not specify in the operative part of the judgment the period for which those consequences would last. “If the law had prescribed a precisely determined duration of the legal consequences, their inclusion in the operative part would not have been necessary. However, since the duration is not determined by law, the court was, in my opinion, obliged to specify it in the operative part of the judgment. Since this was not done, the question arises as to whether those consequences could have taken effect at all,” Popović explained. He emphasized that in criminal law every ambiguity must be interpreted in favour of the convicted person and that, for this reason, it can be argued either that the legal consequences never took effect or that they lasted only for the shortest possible period, since the law does not prescribe a minimum duration. “I believe that the goal of the prosecutor’s office and the court was to prohibit the holding of the office of Republika Srpska president, not an indefinite number of other public offices,” Popović said. “For all of the above reasons, I believe there are serious legal arguments for the position that Milorad Dodik can be a candidate for any offices except Republika Srpska President, because only that prohibition is explicitly contained in the operative part of the judgment, while any other potential legal consequences are not clearly defined either in terms of their content or their duration,” Popović concluded.