Milorad Dodik sentenced to one year in prison and banned from holding office

A BiH court sentences Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska, to one year in prison and a six-year ban from holding office for disrespecting the decisions of High Representative Christian Schmidt. This first instance ruling represents the first serious legal blow to Dodik, who has been destabilising BiH for years by challenging state institutions.

Dodik’s co-defendant, former acting director of the Official Gazette of the Republika Srpska, Milos Lukic, was acquitted of the charges. Both were accused of knowingly continuing to implement laws blocked by the High Representative in July 2023, including a law preventing the implementation of decisions of the Constitutional Court of BiH in Republika Srpska.

Although under Bosnian law a sentence of up to one year can be commuted to a fine of €52 per day of imprisonment, the verdict is a serious political blow for Dodik. He immediately dismissed the expected court decision as a “political process” and an attempt to “destroy Republika Srpska”. However, the reality is quite different – Dodik has been using the institutions of the RS for years to personally profit from and undermine peace in the region.

Before the verdict, Dodik attended a support rally in Banjaluka, where he said that his party would “take important decisions”, without specifying what he meant. The National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia held an extraordinary session at which it ordered Serbian representatives in BiH institutions to block decisions and reforms crucial for the country’s European integration. However, Dodik failed to win the support of the opposition, which criticised him for economic stagnation, corruption and international isolation.

His threats of secession are growing louder but less realistic. Although he tries to portray himself as a victim of ‘foreign forces’, the fact is that he is the main culprit in the political and economic crisis in Republika Srpska. His ties with Russia and his open non-recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state have not brought prosperity to the citizens of the RS – on the contrary, young people are leaving the entity in large numbers and economic indicators are failing./The Geopost/