Trivic: Dodik's Verdict Was a Deal With Foreigners
Dodik's verdict settled accounts with both the international community and Sarajevo, says Narodni front president Jelena Trivic, as the SNSD leader keeps running his party.
The verdict against Dodik, which bars SNSD president Milorad Dodik from political activity, was not the end of the political crisis in Republika Srpska but its arranged outcome, according to Narodni front (People’s Front) president Jelena Trivic. On Saturday, August 8, Trivic publicly asked how Dodik could be convicted with a final ruling and still lead his party and run a campaign. For Belgrade this is not a distant topic: Serbian politics has measured its relationship with Banja Luka against its relationship with Dodik for years, and now the opposition inside Republika Srpska itself is claiming the trial was part of an arrangement with foreign offices.
“Dodik convicted, and still doing politics. How is that? Well, a pact with foreigners,” Trivic said.
A Verdict as a Trade, in Narodni Front’s Reading
Trivic describes the verdict in two layers. First as the result, in her words, of legal violence by the international community. Then, just as quickly, as a trade in which every side got what it came for.
“He got convicted, legal violence was done, meaning the international community wanted to show it can do whatever it wants here. Sarajevo was calmed down a bit, so there you go, Dodik got convicted, and Dodik does politics,” Trivic said.
She calls the months Republika Srpska spent inside the trial a farce, and blames both sides in the proceedings for it.
“For months we were hostages of a judicial process and a political farce created by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Milorad Dodik, only for it to turn out now that it was all a farce and a pact with foreigners,” Trivic claims.
Narodni front, its president recalls, did not welcome the verdict, since the party views it as legal violence. But Dodik himself, she says, treated it differently: he accepted it, complied with it, paid off the fine and filed an appeal with the Constitutional Court.
What Does a Political Ban Mean If He Stays Party Chief?
This is where Trivic takes her most direct aim at the verdict’s legal effect. A ban on political activity, in her reading, cannot leave the position of party president untouched, since a party by definition exists to do politics.
“If it’s a ban on political work, how can he be party president? He’s not the head of a folklore society or a poets’ association,” she said.
The question is not merely rhetorical. If a mandate inside state institutions can be separated from a function inside the party, the sanction reaches only one layer of power, and the party machine stays intact heading into the campaign.
The Poplasen Comparison and the Countdown to October 4
Trivic compared Dodik to Nikola Poplasen, the president of Republika Srpska removed from office in March 1999 by then High Representative Carlos Westendorp. Poplasen stepped back from the position after his removal, while Trivic argues he continued his politics through other means.
“There’s life without power too. There’s life without the chair too,” she said, adding that Dodik is fighting only for his own large private ownership interests.
The comparison was not accidental. Poplasen was the first president of Republika Srpska removed by decision of an international official, and Trivic uses his example as a yardstick for how far Dodik’s SNSD has drifted from the principle the opposition claims to stand for.
Challenging the legitimacy of international institutions remains Dodik’s standing line of defense, the same one he used to tell Berlin that the Peace Implementation Council has no right to appoint a high representative. What’s new is that the same argument is now coming from the opposite side as well: Trivic does not defend the legitimacy of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, yet she claims its verdict against Dodik was politically arranged.
The calendar leaves her little room to maneuver. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s general elections are set for October 4, and the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina is due to publish confirmed candidate lists by August 20. Narodni front is entering that race as one of three opposition parties that signed an agreement to run together:
- Narodni front
- Pokret Sigurna Srpska (Safe Srpska Movement)
- Srpska demokratska stranka (Serb Democratic Party, SDS)
Such an alliance only makes sense if it manages to sell voters on Dodik’s verdict as his political defeat, not as an outside strike against Republika Srpska. That is why Trivic is not so much disputing the content of the verdict as the way Dodik walked out of it. The next test of how well that message has landed comes with the confirmed candidate lists in mid-August.
