In a blog post on April 28, U.S. Ambassador to BiH Eric Nelson criticized politicians who “want to revert to a retrograde ‘Original Dayton.’”
These comments closely resembled part of a January address by Bakir Izetbegović, head of BiH’s largest Bosniak political party, which condemned Serbs who “demand a return to the ‘original Dayton’” and said that “there can be no retrograde returns.”
It is useful to ask what “Original Dayton” means and why its opponents consider it “retrograde.”
What is “Original Dayton”? The answer is simple: It is the BiH Constitution, which was Annex 4 of the Dayton Accords and only has a single amendment, pertaining to the Brčko District. The Constitution has never been amended to expand the competences of the BiH level.
When a country’s constitution is only 25 years old, calls to enforce that constitution as written are nothing more than a demand for respect the rule of law—indeed, the highest law of the land.
How can the BiH Constitution’s opponents denounce as “retrograde” demands that the Constitution be respected and not disregarded to suit the political aims of one party? The answer is that BiH’s governing system has, in many ways, departed from the Constitution’s clear prescriptions—rule of law be damned. Over the years, successive High Representatives, through illegal decrees and coercion, imposed sweeping new laws to centralize BiH, all in violation of the Constitution’s strict and explicit limits to the BiH level’s competences.
Meanwhile, an alliance of foreign and Bosniak judges on the BiH Constitutional Court, with acknowledged interference from the Office of the High Representative, rubber-stamped these flagrantly unconstitutional acts.
If the BiH Constitution agreed at Dayton is now considered retrograde, that only shows how badly the meddling of foreign officials and the political machinations of one group in BiH have distorted the governing system in BiH from the dictates of the current Constitution.
BiH’s friends in the international community rightly emphasize the importance of respect for the rule of law—and yet some seem to be blind to their own hypocrisy when they denounce Serb politicians for merely demanding adherence to the rule of law. That is all that politicians seeking a “return” to “Original Dayton” are doing—asking that the current Constitution be respected as a Constitution.
Moreover, if calls to enforce the terms of a treaty that is only 25 years old are to be attacked as illegitimate and retrograde by international diplomats, then one wonders what the purpose of a treaty is.
