Karan: Ten Years Since the January 9 Referendum
Republika Srpska President Sinisa Karan marks ten years since the referendum in which 99.81 percent of voters backed marking January 9 as Day of Republika Srpska.
Ten years after citizens of Republika Srpska voted to mark January 9 as Day of the Republic, President Sinisa Karan said the anniversary is more than a reminder of a well organized election day. It is, he said, a reminder of Srpska’s duty to guard its constitutional powers. For Belgrade, which watches political developments in Banja Luka as closely as it does those in Brussels or Washington, the statement lands at a moment when the constitutional status of Republika Srpska is once again on the table in talks about the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The referendum was held on September 25, 2016, and voters answered the question: “Do you support marking and celebrating January 9 as Day of Republika Srpska?” According to the results the National Assembly of Republika Srpska established at the time, 99.81 percent of those who turned out, or 677,771 voters, answered yes. January 9 marks the day in 1992 when Republika Srpska was proclaimed.
The vote followed a dispute before the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which in 2015 ruled that the January 9 provision was not in line with the country’s constitution. In September 2016, the court tried to block the referendum with an interim measure, and after the vote went ahead anyway, it later annulled the results. Karan, who chaired the Republic Commission overseeing the referendum’s implementation at the time, did not dispute in his anniversary statement that those rulings exist. He argued, however, that neither can erase the fact that the vote was held and that citizens gave a clear answer.
“Srpska’s constitutional status under Dayton will not be preserved by occasional statements. It is preserved through knowledge, persistence, responsible decisions and a willingness to discuss the most important issues and reach agreement directly with the people,” Karan said.
The Republika Srpska president also pointed to the framework set out in Annex 4 of the Dayton Peace Agreement, under which Bosnia and Herzegovina is made up of two equal entities, Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, arguing that the order established by that agreement must be applied exactly as written. He concluded that the 2016 referendum proved Srpska has the institutional capacity to carry out a republic wide vote even under extraordinary political pressure, and that the decision on when the people will next be asked directly remains within the authority of its own institutions.
“Republika Srpska has the constitutional voice of its institutions, and when there is a basis and a need for it, it also has the direct voice of its people,” Karan noted.
The question of Republika Srpska’s constitutional powers remains unresolved in relations between Banja Luka and Sarajevo, and every new statement by the president of Srpska on Dayton has a direct bearing on Belgrade’s position in regional talks about the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
