Bosnia Removes Dodik as Serb Leader After Jail Ruling

Moscow's ally Dodik has rejected the verdict and said he would stay in power as long as Bosnian Serb lawmakers back him. He promised to enlist Russia and U.S. President Donald Trump as patrons. He said the same process would be mirrored in the Serb entity of Bosnia, Republika Srpska, and concluded by announcing a referendum to allow residents to determine if he should resign, warning that acceding to this would amount to breaking the constitution of Republika Srpska and betraying the Serb folk.

Legal Battle and Political Backlash
In February, a Bosnian court convicted Dodik of disrespecting the Constitutional Court and High Representative Christian Schmidt's decisions. Schmidt has a mandate to ensure Bosnia remains stable and does not slide back into conflict. But officials in Republika Srpska refuse to recognise Schmidt's authority, saying his appointment came without consent from the United Nations Security Council.

Dodik charged Muslims with the verdict at his press conference and laid into Schmidt. Both the sentence and the political ban have been described as nonsense by the Republika Srpska government. Dodik's SNSD party has also called for a national-unity government and invited opposition parties to take part.

Dodik responded with a "surrender is not acceptable" on the social network profile. Although it is not clear yet if he will appeal the commission's ruling, Serbia, Russia and Hungary have all backed him, saying that they are politically motivated charges.

Bosnia Faces Deepening Political Crisis
As an aside, Dodik has long worked to secede Republika Srpska from Bosnia. Several separatist laws have been passed by his government in the RS parliament; however, these were subsequently suspended by the Constitutional Court. He has also run afoul of the law by defying a subpoena from state prosecutors, ultimately leading to a warrant for his arrest.

The crisis is the worst since the 1992-95 war, in which an estimated 100,000 people were killed. The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement established a complicated political framework, splitting Bosnia into two semi-autonomous entities — the Bosniak-Croat Federation and Serb-majority Republika Srpska — controlled by a central, but toothless federal government. Abandoning this equilibrium in favour of the current conflict, however, threatens postwar stability.