Do you know the story of the scorpion who asks the frog to carry him across the river? At first, the frog is afraid that the scorpion will sting her, but the scorpion convinces her that if he stings her, she will sink and they will both drown. The frog then agrees, but the scorpion still stings her in the middle of the river, dooming them both to death.

When the frog, in her dying breath, asks him why he did it, the scorpion replies: “I am a scorpion, it’s in my nature.”

It seems that high representatives in Bosnia and Herzegovina behave similarly, whom the international community assigned to that country after the end of the war to ensure that the civilian part of the Dayton Agreement is consistently implemented.

However, so far, high representatives have done everything but what they were tasked with. They enforced violent changes to the constitution, altered the parliamentary structure itself, multiplied Croatian political will in BiH by zero, and favored the most numerous nationalism in the country.

With the arrival of German diplomat Christian Schmidt in BiH, who expressed hope that he would be the last high representative, it seemed that they had moved away from this practice.

However, Schmidt, just like his predecessors, continues to be inconsistent. Recently, after a meeting with Željko Komšić, he stated that legally speaking, the Ljubić judgment was enforced. But it wasn’t. And Željko Komšić is the biggest living proof that it wasn’t enforced.

What is the Ljubić judgment anyway? In short, it is a judgment of the Constitutional Court of BiH, which stated that constitutiveness is the main constitutional principle in Bosnia and Herzegovina and that it should apply to all administrative-political levels of government. And the Presidency is one of them. In all of these levels, political representatives elected by a certain national group in BiH should be represented. Whether they are Croatian, Serbian, or Bosniak.

There shouldn’t be a Croat, Serb, or Bosniak sitting there, but their representative. If BiH Croats want their representative to be Maja Šuput or Alka Vuica and if they choose them, the other two national groups shouldn’t interfere in that!

That’s the essence of the Ljubić judgment, and the living proof that it wasn’t enforced is – Željko Komšić.

Schmidt and Komšić, who claimed that the judgment was enforced, were refuted by the BiH Prosecutor’s Office a few days later!

Namely, the Prosecutor’s Office responded to the state parliament in BiH that the judgment of the Constitutional Court was not enforced and that the Prosecutor’s Office is conducting an investigation against parliamentarians who were supposed to enforce the decision within six months (back in 2018!), but failed to do so.

The Prosecutor’s Office is, it seems, wrong, and the high representative is right. Christian Schmidt really seems unable to go against his nature and has a pharaonic complex just like his predecessors. It will be too late if he becomes aware of this only when the frog, in this case, Bosnia and Herzegovina, sinks. He will, after all, go down with her, and he’s well on his way as he has started to sting.

ICrnjac