Government of RS and All Its Enemies

Milorad Dodik Fighting on Several Fronts

Dodik definitely is not a longterm project because he tried to use the aid of foreigners to square accounts with his surroundings instead to win the favours of the electorate and political forces in RS

AIM Banja Luka, 15 November, 1999

Milorad Dodik is a rare example of a politician who considers himself to be successful although he had begun his statesman's career with less enemies than he has nowadays, after almost two years spent in power. Let us be reminded: in January 1998 when in the most dramatic night of parliamentarianism in the Republic of Srpska he became the prime minister, he enjoyed such support of the international community that it had sent transporters and helicopters of SFOR to bring a Bosniac deputy who had tried to avoid raising his hand in favour of the new government; the Bosniacs had given a solid vote to him believing that in this way they were definitely eliminating the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) from the game; Biljana Plavsic considered him to be her political product who would make all the promises she had given operational; the Socialists of Zivko Radisic agreed to endure accusations of treason, claiming that they were giving their votes for "one of their own"; although forced to do it, by offering support to Dodik, Slobodan Milosevic thought that he was striking a good deal because he was getting for a partner, instead of the stubborn Plavsic, a man who had spent a considerable time on his divan. Furthermore: almost every one of the intellectuals and journalists in Banja Luka who were worth anything and who used their own heads was prepared to give his right arm that after a long time something good was happening to RS. And just another reminder: only the SDS and the Radicals were against Dodik, but the arguments of Aleksa Buha and Nikola Poplasen who were the severest critics of the new prime minister at the time, spoke more of their despair than of his qualities.

TWO YEARS LATER: And then almost two years passed and everything changed. In the same order: Biljana Plavsic's Serb People's Harmony (SNS), which was once Dodik's most powerful coalition partner, split in relation to him. While ones, like vice president of SNS Jovo Mitrovic, claim that because of criminal scandals and corruption Dodik's government is screening itself behind coalition partners and that it would "therefore be very good if the government would be changed", Plavsic herself is acting as someone who would gladly place her political destiny into Dodik's hands. The split Socialists have not only realised that Dodik was not one of them, but find it increasingly hard to believe that there there is still room for either them or him on the political scene. Apart from crime, they reproach him that he has completely taken the government out of control of the parties which form it, that he is leading it as a single-party structure, they are accusing him that he is responsible for deterioration of relations with Serbia, depriving RS of its biggest export market. Almost everything has been said about Milosevic and Dodik: at first they went along well and did business even better, and then after new estrangement between the West and Milosevic, Dodik was forced to choose: Sloba or the foreigners. It is not a problem that the Serb prime minister has chosen the foreigners, but that he believed that it was his destiny to be the bearer of anti-Milosevic resistance among the Serbs. Therefore, when Dodik says that "RS will not cooperate with Serbia as long as Milosevic is at its head", it is a politically more than appropriate stand, but only under the condition that he can prove what Madeleine Albright did not manage to do: that whole of Serbia is not equal to Milosevic and that Milosevic will not sit at his post at the same time next year.

Bosniacs who had invested their votes in Dodik, more due to pressure exerted by foreigners than because they believed that they would be better off with him than with Krajisnik, whenever the pressure eased accused the prime minister that he was not different from his predecessors. While Serbia was bombed, commissioners of Alija Izetbegovic for RS tried to use the moment of general weakening of the Serbs, full of confidence that if they managed to prove to the foreigners that Dodik was in fact masked Radovan Karadzic, and at the same time provide evidence that that everybody in RS were the same and that an end should be finally put on this genocidal entity. One cannot say that Dodik has not helped them, as independent intellectuals whose support Dodik has mostly lost tend to claim about the Serb prime minister. They agree that the prime minister's rule is authoritarian, that he answers to noone for what he does, that he failed to establish institutions, but on the contrary did his best to dissolve them, that he is currupt and that he has surrounded himself by persons of similar inclination, that between promotion of the system and his own he chose the easier road, that he has understood his role as the job of a cashier who distributes foreign aid instead of creating a sound economic structure. Finally, as if all this was not enough for him, Dodik has clashed even with those who had enabled him to survive all conflicts he had caused or participated in. This refers to the foreigners with whom he at first squabbled about the law on radio-TV RS and establishing of a joint B&H television program, which culminated in illegal replacement of Andjelko Kozomara, director of RT RS, and which especially irritated the foreigners.

How did this happen? Simon Haselock, the firts man of the Office of High Representative for media, claims that Dodik was induced to do it by the minister of information Rajko Vasic, at the moment the most rigid figure in Serb authorities. Haselock, of course, is not naive to believe what he is saying: he knows that with its hierarchy Serb government operates as a court, but wishes to avoid direct confrontation of the foreigners with Dodik because they still consider him to be the most useful Serb on the left side of the Drina. Just as Milosevic and Poplasen say that Serbia is is not in a conflict with the international community (there are Chine, Russia, India), Dodik believes that he has differences with just certain circles in the international community, assessing that he might profit from the fact that American officials in Sarajevo are not very fond of Haselock. This is just another costly mistake.

LUCK AND INTELLIGENCE: Reasons for such inclination towards conflicts of Serb prime minister should be sought in the state of mind of the man who is acting on the political scene as a man who works abroad when he comes to his native village, but also in a much more important fact. Just as due to the lack of a real strategy Karadzic and Milosevic gambled by playing on a single card only, Dodik is playing his game unsuccessfully trying to persuade the public to believe in his democratic habitus. The fact that Dodik's card is not "to persevere until circumstances in the world change" (Karadzic) or "the third world war" (Milosevic), but the international community, makes him just much luckier but not much more intelligent. That is why Dodik who has tried to use the aid of the foreigners to square accounts with his surroundings and not to win the favours of the electorate and the political forces in RS, cannot be their longterm project. Nowadays he is worth only as much as he is condemned to survive solely on the thin string of foreign support. Against his will, Dodik is, therefore, a project which will last for exactly as long as the foreigners will need to implement everything that the Serbs will not like, and the very moment they choose to get support of the majority of the population for their projects, they will look for someone else. That is why Rajko Vasic, Dodik's Velibor Ostojic - the man who has dirtied his hands instead of the prime minister - who claims that Dodik is a "15-year project" might be right but only if for that much longer in RS there will be things more important than democracy, than development of the system and the state which will not be the greatest prostitute in this part of Europe.

Zeljko Cvijanovic

(AIM)