KARAN: BiH CONSTITUTIONAL COURT RULINGS LACK CONSTITUTIONAL BASIS

BANJA LUKA, SEPTEMBER 26 /SRNA/ - The decision by the incomplete Constitutional Court of BiH to block the implementation of Republika Srpska contracts is not a "victory for the rule of law", but rather a continuation of what Republika Srpska President Siniša Karan described as a long and dangerous practice of changing BiH's constitutional order outside the Dayton Agreement.

Commenting on the decision by the incomplete Constitutional Court of BiH, which found that a consulting services contract with Dickens & Madson Canada, as well as budget financing for lobbying activities on behalf of Republika Srpska through lobbying firms, was "not in accordance with the BiH Constitution", Karan said in a statement to SRNA that the ruling was a continuation of decades of unlawful practices by high representatives who imposed decisions without any basis in the Constitution.

He stressed that the incomplete Constitutional Court was creating a new constitutional reality, with the aim of a gradual but essentially classic unitarization of BiH.

"The Dayton Constitution is clear: it guarantees Republika Srpska full internal sovereignty over its own territory, competencies, resources and budget decisions, as well as the right to act internationally, protect and promote its interests, and maintain external contacts within the framework provided by the Constitution.

A decision denying Srpska the right to finance its own activities is a direct attack on its legitimate scope of action and an attempt to isolate it financially and politically. This is not about details. It is about principle," Karan stressed.

He said the incomplete Constitutional Court of BiH had long ceased to be the protector of the Constitution and had instead become a generator of constitutional crisis - rather than defending the order agreed in Dayton, it was reshaping it decision by decision in line with what he called Sarajevo unitarism.

"And yet, for years we have witnessed a reversal of roles: the Constitutional Court of BiH tries to portray Republika Srpska as the one undermining the constitutional order, while in reality it is the Court itself which, by eroding Srpska's sovereignty, directly undermines the constitutional system set out in Annex Four. BiH is not, and never will be, either a unitary or a single-nation state; it is a multiethnic, federal and complex community," Karan pointed out.

He stressed that the issue of so-called state property should also not be overlooked, as part of the same pattern: declaring resources, land and concession potential to be "state-owned" and then stripping the entities of what he sees as their basic constitutional right to manage their own development.

"BiH has no original property of its own. Property belongs to the entities in the 49:51 ratio, and insisting that Sarajevo should manage the territory of either entity is an exercise in political engineering whose ultimate goal is to strip the entities of their powers entirely.

Republika Srpska will not accept these constitutional and legal absurdities, in which Dayton is formally invoked while its substance is emptied out. Defending internal sovereignty and the right to finance our own activities is not a matter of political choice, but a constitutional obligation and a condition for the survival of both Republika Srpska and Dayton BiH itself," Karan concluded.