Good News? Dodik a traitor!

An article in the latest issue of Pecat, “list slobodne Srbije” (The paper of free Serbia), published by an early advocate of free Serbia as close  party aide to Milosevic in the good old early 1990s, Milorad Vucelic, accuses of Milorad Dodik of selling out Serb interests.

What happened? The new poster boy of defending Serb national interests from Laktasi to “Kosovo je Srbija” events, a traitor?

The crime: On 26 January, he signed, together with the other signatories of the November 2008 Prud Agreement, HDZ and SDA a new short declaration which notes that “BiH is a decentralized state , organized on three levels of government. The middle level of government will be constituted of four territorial units, where every territorial unit rests on sharing of power at the legislative, executive and judicial level.”

While still vague and a commitment on principle rather than the specifics (which are likely to be more contested), it is the first time that a cross-community consensus on the structure of BiH might be possible. Of course, the mention of a fourth unit is in fact a third entity for the Croat community, a controversial yet not entirely illogical development considering the structure of the state.

So what is Dodik’s treachery? Instead of undermining the Dayton Agreement to move towards independence, he’s accused of undermining Dayton to replace it with a more federal state. While this is hardly the content of the new agreement, international organizations might yet find themselves in a position to defend Dodik from potential spoilers to any constitutional reform.