There Has Been No Transfer of
Authority
Just one point from OHR this morning and
it is on the subject of election rhetoric and a statement made earlier this week
by Prime Minister Dodik. The Prime Minister appears to have misunderstood a
provision in BiH law, and OHR would like to clear up this
misunderstanding.
Prime Minister Dodik has suggested that if his party is in
a position to do so after the elections it will seek to recover authority that
has been transferred from the Entities to the State in regard to the
This authority cannot be recovered
because it was never transferred in the first place.
The Law on the Court of BiH and the
Law on the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH were enacted on the basis of the BiH
constitution, which makes certain criminal matters the clear responsibility of
the State.
All matters relating to the
Court
Prosecutor’s Office are matters for the State to decide, not the Entities. This
has been confirmed by the
Mr Dodik also called for the removal of
international judges and prosecutors, on the grounds that their presence in BiH
courts is intolerable.
The international judges and prosecutors
in
Bosnia and Herzegovina
have been hired because they can
bring additional experience and skills to the country’s hard-pressed justice
system. This is about prosecuting criminals; it has nothing to do with Entity
competencies. It is not immediately clear how firing judges and prosecutors who
have come to work in BiH would help the fight against crime, which Mr Dodik says
he wholeheartedly supports.
