Dodik is sinking deeper into isolation: The EU is removing him from plans, the finances of RS are under pressure

Dodik, believing he is stronger than fate, has forgotten the need for an exit strategy, says Janjić, and both foreign and domestic actors are excluding the SNSD leader from all activities

The political isolation of Milorad Dodik, other important members of the SNSD and the coalition partners – the United Serbian and Socialist Parties – is increasingly evident. Internationally, Dodik and his supporters have contact only with a few European Union countries and occasionally with Russia, while domestically he has been erased from the agendas of both representatives of the international community and almost all domestic political actors.

Clear positions

Marta Kos, the European Commissioner for Enlargement, said that one or two countries could become members of the Union by the end of the current European Commission’s mandate and reiterated that the political stalemate in Bosnia and Herzegovina was slowing progress. She added that official Brussels supports those parties and actors that are committed to progress.

Milorad Dodik’s separatist policies are dragging the country backwards, not forwards, and it is time for those who believe in the country’s future in the EU to join forces and implement reforms, Kos said.

It has already made it clear that Dodik will not be an interlocutor in discussions on solutions for Bosnia and Herzegovina and that he is preventing the normalisation of the situation. Several EU Member States have already sanctioned the President of the RS, and several have announced that they will do so in the coming period. The exclusion of the SNSD, with the President at its head, and their partners from the meeting with the Peace Implementation Council is proof that the isolation is also escalating at the domestic level.

They are not leaving anyone out. They know one thing, that the SNSD would not even go to such meetings. And in order to avoid being rejected and told that we have nothing to ask for there, that these are not even topics that are being discussed, the SNSD will not even receive an invitation from this side, because the SNSD’s positions are absolutely clear, stressed Srđan Amidžić from the SNSD.

With the exception of communication with HDZ BiH leader Dragan Covic, which, as Covic himself said, is less frequent than before, Dodik and the others have been ostracised from all other domestic actors on the political scene.

Nobody drowned because they could not swim, because only a crazy person who cannot swim goes into the water. But the one who drowned is the one who does not know when to get out of the water, Belgrade-based political analyst Dusan Janjic told Oslobođenje, adding that Dodik did not have an exit strategy and that for years he pretended to be stronger than fate.

And then the space narrowed. Now all his game is tied to keeping Aleksandar Vucic in power in Serbia, and that too is a mirage, Janjić believes.

Time to step down

He says that the time has come for Dodik to make sensible moves and that it is time for him to step down, and that anything else leads to the collapse of both the RS entity and the stability of Serbia, which he is severely destabilising. He adds that if this is not the case, the international players will step up their action to resolve the problem.

Dodik’s insistence on fighting isolation will certainly have financial consequences for the citizens of the RS. The German-French informal document, which will also be discussed by the EU bodies, foresees the withdrawal of financial support for any project that would be partially or directly beneficial to the RS, and the Union should, as stated, also approach other international financiers and ensure the same attitude./Oslobodjenje.ba/