Parliament of RS : Deja vu

AIM Banja Luka, December 17, 2000

The post-election political complication in Republika Srpska (RS) caused by combinations in constituting the administration which will satisfy the wishes of the voters and at the same time the requirements of the international community has finally been disentangled. The Party of Democratic Progress (PDP), the Socialist Party (SP) and the Democratic People's League (DNS) agreed to establish an alliance with the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) and constitute a stable parliamentary majority of 46 deputies. The parliament of RS was constituted after this agreement; it will be chaired again by the first postwar chairman of the People's Assembly and the current president of SDS, Dragan Kalinic.

Hidden behind the planned glamorous assembly ceremony remained the big open question whether the new authorities would get the support of the international community. Doubts were caused by the absence of all the invited international officials from the constituting session of the parliament. Their warnings, more or less plainly, were intended to show that the SDS in the administration would not have any international support. The Americans were quite blunt in this stand. Ambassador Thomas Miller, just a few days before the session of the parliament, was very clear: the USA would interrupt all forms of aid to RS if the SDS took power in any form.

The grand return of the SDS was marked by almost unbelievable symbols: for the first time the assembly session was opened by striking up the national anthem of Bosnia & Herzegovina, for the first time the flag of B&H was seen in the assembly hall, for the first time a representative of the Islamic religious community (Banja Luka Mufti) was present at the session of the parliament and for the first time the deputies of the SDS voted in favour of a candidate of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) for a high state post in RS (deputy chairman of the parliament). All this was until yesterday unconceivable for the image of the SDS. That is why Milorad Dodik, the by now former prime minister of RS, ironically said in front of TV cameras, that everything he had heard at the assembly session looked like a great fraud of the SDS. His party colleague Krstan Simic reminded that that very same SDS which voted in favour of the deputy of the SDA Sulejman Tihic had until yesterday been against the proposal of prime minister Dodik that one of deputy chairmen be elected from among the parties from B&H Federation.

Political cynics after that concluded that Dodik had in fact been a much tougher Serb than the present-day SDS and that the ruling team of the SDS would much more efficiently build the demolished mosques, return refugees and extradite war criminals to the Hague, than Dodik would have done. Those who like to make political forecasts hurried to conclude that the SDS was about to commit political suicide which might give great joy to former prime minister Milorad Dodik himself.

The coalition partners of the SDS got goose bumps from the very thought of the words “coalition” or “alliance” with it, perhaps aware to what extent a union with this party is unnatural and suicidal. That is why the PDP and the Socialists persistently repeat that this partnership is not a coalition, but “joint action aimed at increasing the stability of RS and B&H and the achievement of priority goals, such as strengthening of the institutions on all levels, of the legal state, human rights, the struggle against corruption and implementation of economic and social reforms” (Socialists). However, connoisseurs of political platforms and the leaders of the parties of the alliance know well that it is primarily a patriotic coalition made to measure of the voters who, as known, chose to support protectors of national interests on all the three sides.

It seems that the first to feel the effects of “joint action” were the Socialists from whom the SDS at the last minute “snatched away” the promised post of the chairman of the People's Assembly. Sources close to the party leadership of the Socialists claim that the day before the assembly session it was agreed that a high official and former chairman Petar Djokic be nominated as candidate for the chairman of the assembly. Nevertheless, the personnel and nomination commission nominated Dragan Kalinic and Djokic received the message to empty the office the very next day.

What it is like to negotiate with the SDS was once more experienced by the deputies of the parties from B&H Federation. The agreement on the assembly oath of allegiance reached, as claimed, thanks to a very difficult compromise the day before was changed by the SDS which struck out the word “B&H” from the wording of the secular oath (“ observe the constitutions and the laws of RS and B&H”). That is how the story about the oath was repeated as so many times before in the same form, leaving the painful impression of senseless hairsplitting over completely insignificant matters. Deputies of the SDA, the Party for B&H, the Social Democratic Party of B&H and the New Croat Initiative refused to pledge allegiance and left the building of the assembly while their Serb colleagues were taking the oath by saying the text of the religious oath of allegiance.

Although it is a positive fact that the national anthem and the flag of B&H arrived in the People's Assembly of RS on account of a list of conditions which were recently imposed on the SDS by High Representative for B&H Wolfgang Petritsch, which they had to sign, the dispute about the anthem speaks in itself about the nature of this “new” policy of the SDS. The conviction that striking out of the words “RS” and “B&H” from the secular oath is acceptable “at this moment” sounds too hypocritical when one knows that the same parliament adopts two oaths one of which (the secular one) is intended for the deputies of other creeds. That is the reason why the absence of all invited international officials from the constitutive assembly session can be understood as justified fear that matters in the parliament of RS will not at all move forward away from what could be seen or heard there a few years ago. Many believe that the absence of the state delegation of FR Yugoslavia and its president Vojislav Kostunica is also an announcement of bad political times for RS.

If “political bizarreness” in the assembly décor is disregarded, the constitutive session of the People's Assembly of RS passed in the atmosphere of a déjà vu rhetoric, déjà vu rituals and déjà vu individuals. According to many, a déjà vu policy as well!

Branko Peric

(AIM)