MILORAD DODIK, PRIME MINISTER OF RS, OR THE SHADOW CABINET COMING OUT OF THE SHADOW

Icebreaker On Its Way

AIM Sarajevo, 19 January, 1998

"If there is to be any life in this space, it automatically means that an alternative political option must be accepted. Therefore, it is just a matter of time when the political solution we are advocating will become the reality", way back in May 1995, said self-confidently for AIM Milorad Dodik, the then leader of the lonely seven-member opposition to the regime in Pale and the today elected prime minister of the Republic of Srpska. At the time when he claimed this (at the meeting of the Democratic Alternative of B&H in Perugia), Karadzic's supporters were tying members of UNPROFOR as their hostages to posts and cars, a grenade was shot at Tuzla killing more than seventeen young people, all fronts in B&H were still ablaze, weapons were thundering, and failures of a series of conferences on ceasefire were making people in Bosnia & Herzegovina feel completely hopeless.

Dodik's appearance and the political option he promoted much before signing of the Dayton accords, were experienced either as "politically exotic" in the environment of tyranny of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS), with allegedly questionable prospects for the future or as the first clear sign of untenableness of nationalistic regimes in the part of B&H where rigidity of a single-party absolutism reached the utmost level. For those who knew how (or wanted) to listen to different opinions in the years when the famous Contact Group was trying to end the bloodshed in B&H and force the leaders to sit down at the negotiating table, the today newly-elected prime minister of the RS government is no surprise.

"The ruling structures on all sides support and maintain each other. And until the first of them falls, it is impossible to expect that a more lasting solution will be found. Because if there is on this side the group which has started the war, there must be a group on the other side which has accepted it, so that a lasting peace with such a political structure i nothing but an illusion", these are Dodik's allegations which he had publicly stated for years before inauguration as prime minister and which numerous so-called oppositionists (in both entities) still do not utter even secretly.

It is an undoubted fact that Dodik's forecasts have begun to come true. The first leg of the three-legged SDS-HDZ-SDA stool - the seven-year old coalition - is almost broken. That Milorad Dodik is the best solution - better than Biljana Plavsic or even Mladen Ivanic - for its final breakdown is best confirmed by the difference between Dodik and the rest of the opposition in the Republic of Srpska.

The first thing that cannot be denied to this 38-year old independent entrepreneur (furniture manufacturer) is continuous political struggle asgainst Karadzic and the policy of the SDS, as well as consistent advocating of a peaceful solution of the conflict. A prewar deputy of the B&H parliament and member of Reform Forces, who joined the party of the last prime minister of former Yugoslavia as one of the prosperous private entrepreneurs and creator of the so-called heaven for entrepreneurs in his native Laktasi, in the wartime parliament of the Republic of Srpska, Dodik continued to be a member of the parliament, but refused any form of collaboration with the SDS. Irritated by the refusal of the peace plan of the Contact Group by Pale in 1994, with a group of deputies who held similar stands, also prewar Reformists or ex-communists, he formed a group of independent deputies, better known as Group 7, which became the core of what later became the Party of Independent Social Democrats, with Dodik as its president.

During the war he maintained secret contacts with the opposition from the B&H Federation, outside the territory of B&H, of course, and far from the eyes of local power-wielders, and at the first such public gathering in Italy, in Perugia, in the end of May 1995, together with the vice-president of the Union of B&H Social Democrats (UBSD), Sejfudin Tokic, compiled the initial document on possibilities of establishment of lasting peace in Bosnia & Herzegovina, which soon after that became the foundation of the activities of the then established Democratic Alternative of the entire territory of the state of B&H. In this way, months before signing of the Dayton accords, Milorad Dodik put his name on a document in which B&H alternative, among other, demanded interruption of the conflicts by all political means, intensifying of the activities of the international community in establishment of stable peace, constituting of B&H as a decentralized community with strong guarantees for equal rights of all its nations and citizens, establishment of personal guilt and punishment of all war criminals, and coordinated cooperation of independent and alternative forces from the entire territory of B&H. Briefly, the current prime minister of the Republic of Srpska, together with the partnering UBSD, promoted of his own free will the essence of the Dayton accords long before the national leaders were forced to sign them by American dictate.

Such Dodik's activity, unthinkable at the time in the Republic of Srpska, was received with repugnance and hysterical cries about treason of "elevated national causes", more precisely as an obvious declaration of political war to the SDS. Of course, immediately after return from Perugia, criminal charges were raised against Dodik in Banja Luka, for "contacting the enemy", and similar threats awaited the UBSD in Sarajevo, not only by the leaders of the ruling SDA ("Tokic has exceeded all limits by contacting a war criminal", Ismet Grbo, spokesman of the SDA), but also by leaders of the so-called opposition parties, among whom some of the leaders of the Social Democratic Party blazed the trail.

After signing of the Dayton accords, the Democratic Alternative of B&H activated in Perugia was given additional manoeuvring space. At that time, Dodik had already founded his party of social democratic orientation, of course, and with the help of the Socialist Internationale and its parties in power in Western Europe, an offensive for promotion of the alternative political option in B&H was initiated, and final preparations were made for formation of the Alternative Council of Ministers, popularly called the Shadow Cabinet. Its actual promotion shook up again the established national oligarchies of both entities, but at the same time caught increased attention of the international community, especially of the United States, which along with the benevolence of the social democratic Europe, resulted in acceptance of B&H alternative as a serious partner that could be counted on in establishment of lasting peace.

Indeed, election of Milorad Dodik for prime minister of the Republic of Srpska, and the unconcealed support and enthusiasm of international representatives by his inauguration, is far from being an arbitrary choice of an oppositionist after questionable failure of the candidacy of Mladen Ivanic. It is more probable that the offered Ivanic's government was the last opportunity given to Pale to show at least a minimum of cooperativeness in implementation of the peace treaty and the attempt to reach an agreement with the ruling partner from the Federation. After this refusal, and this latest proof that those who are responsible for the war do not wish and cannot build peace, Pale were served the extreme and for them the most painful possibility - Milorad Dodik.

This stubborn man from Bosnian Krajina - with whom, by the way, even private contacts remind of "live" meetings with heroes of Branko Copic's novels such as Nikoletina Bursac - will uncompromisingly and to the end play his role of an icebreaker, in view of his persistence and vision which certainly he does not lack. This time, the international tutors are obviously playing it safe. Especially because election of Dodik for the leading post in the Republic of Srpska cennot pass without reflection of the other entity. The new prime minister of the Republic of Srpska is not an oppositionist only to the SDS, but to all the nationalistic options in B&H. Therefore, the western support to Milorad Dodik is at the same time a clear and unambiguous message to the federal partners in power - SDA and HDZ - which, quite disappointing for them, reveals the new phase of the role of the international community in Bosnia & Herzegovina: here, the Alternative has started to come out in the open from the shadow!

Drazena PERANIC