Word: dodik
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...rhetoric out of the country is alarming. Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik publicly declared that he doesn't believe the common state has a future, and occasionally hints that his Serb-dominated statelet may secede from Bosnia. From the other side of the ethnic divide, leading Bosniak politician Haris Silajdzic repeatedly calls for the abolishment of the Serbian Republic, which he sees as a product of a Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign during the war. "It appears that the status quo created by genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes has acquired a degree of sanctity in Bosnia and Herzegovina...
Meanwhile, insults are flying across the ethnic divide, spurred by tabloid media and populist politicians from both sides. Two weeks ago, Dodik's government decided to remove the adjective "Bosnian" from the names of several towns in the Serbian Republic. Meanwhile, in once multi-ethnic Sarajevo, a decree by Bosniak officials introducing compulsory lessons in the Koran to kindergarteners prompted remaining Serbs and Croats to pull their children out of school. "Instead of showing some statesmanship, Bosnian political leaders are practicing petty politics", complains the current OHR chief, Slovakian diplomat Miroslav Lajcak...
...divisive ethnic vitriol is further fueled by political calculation. Nationalism sells - as Dodik's and Silajdzic's parties learned in recent local elections, when they won the bulk of the vote in their respective constituencies. The politics of ethnocentrism props up the parties that really don't have anything else to offer the populace. The economy has been in deep trouble even before the international financial crisis. Unemployment and corruption are among highest in the region. Basic goods suffer from inflation. According to a recent study, about 70% of Bosnians below the age of 30 have abandoned hope...
...Bosnian Serb politicians go, Milorad Dodik was considered one of the good guys. The former businessman took over the job of Prime Minister of the Bosnian Serb Republic in Banja Luka shortly after the end of the Bosnian war in 1995, helping to purge the local government of cronies of the wartime leader Radovan Karadzic. He battled [an error occurred while processing this directive] corruption and helped international investigators send indicted war criminals to the Hague. But these days, Dodik sounds like a changed man. In the past two months he has questioned the underlying agreement that ended...
...establish a centralized government in Sarajevo, but critics fear he means a Muslim-dominated state in which ethnic Serbs and Croats would lose their collective rights. Serb leaders insist that the entities, and hence their Serb-dominated statelet, are sacrosanct. "We will fight" attempts to dismantle the current system, Dodik told a Serbian news agency earlier this month. Speaking to Time, the Serb Republic's President, Dragan Cavic, struck a more conciliatory note. He said the idea of a referendum calling for the secession of the Serb Republic was "crazy, suicide," but added that dissolving the entity's borders unilaterally...