(CN) — On his side of the border, Milorad Dodik is still kissing babies, shaking hands, making fiery speeches, signing decrees, attending public events and getting treated as the legitimate head of state of the semi-autonomous Republika Srpska, the Serb-dominated half of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
But he's not the legitimate president — at least not under the laws of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the war-scarred multiethnic Balkans country under whose jurisdiction the Republika Srpska and its 1.2 million people have lived, often uncomfortably, ever since the Bosnian War ended with the Dayton Peace Accords 30 years ago this November.
On Aug. 18, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, the country's highest court, upheld a decision to ban Dodik from public office for six years because his secessionist-driven politics were deemed a threat to the constitutional order and violation of the Dayton peace agreement.
But the 66-year-old Dodik, a man-of-the-people figure backed by Russia and a friend of authoritarians like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, isn't budging.
Indeed, Dodik's official schedule has been quite busy in recent days with visits to religious summer festivals, a furniture factory, an international basketball game and the National Assembly, the Republika Srpska's parliament in Banja Luka, the statelet's capital.
“Legally speaking, he is not the president anymore,” said Adnan Huskić, a professor of politics at the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology. “He cannot sign any legal act into law. So, he cannot enforce anything. His signature as the president of the Republika Srpska is no longer valid.”
Dodik, though, sees it differently. He claims the Sarajevo court's ruling runs counter to the Republika Srpska's constitution. He denounces the court and the Office of the High Representative, an international body that enforces the Dayton treaty with the power to impose and annul laws, as illegitimate.
In other words, a constitutional crisis long in the making is culminating in the center of the Balkans and the outcome is hard to predict.
This clash intensified in February when the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina found Dodik guilty of undermining the constitutional order and sentenced him to one year in jail and banned him from public office for six years. But he rejected the ruling.
In April, Bosnia's State Investigation and Protection Agency, a national police force, attempted to arrest Dodik in East Sarajevo, a Serbian section of Sarajevo inside the Republika Srpska, but its agents were blocked by officers from the statelet. The standoff ended with the SIPA officers retreating.
Dodik no longer faces arrest after the Sarajevo court commuted his jail sentence on Aug. 12 after he agreed to pay fines. However, his ban from office remains intact. The question is whether he can be forced out of the president's seat.
“The truth is, legal decisions are meaningless unless they can be enforced, or whose enforcement can at least be credibly threatened,” said Mak Kasapovic, a Balkans expert at Oxford Analytica, a firm that analyses geopolitical risks. “Dodik feels no such pressure.”
After the failed arrest in April, Kasapovic said Dodik believes national authorities will not attempt to force him out of office for fear of sparking violence.
“All of this buys Dodik some time,” Kasapovic said in an email. “He may choose to reluctantly but voluntarily step down at some point or he may choose to escalate further and refuse to vacate his post, but he seems unlikely to be forcibly removed.”
Over the past two decades, Dodik has dominated the bitter and toxic postwar politics of the Republika Srpska, a Serb-controlled entity forged in the wars that broke out with the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.
In 1992, Bosnian Serb nationalists opposed to Bosnia-Herzegovina's declaration of independence from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia declared their own independence from Bosnia and said their new state, the Republika Srpska or Serb Republic, would remain part of Yugoslavia.
Follow @cainburdeau
