This article is also available in: Shqip Macedonian Bos/Hrv/Srp

Bosnian Serb President MIlorad Dodik. Photo: Beta.

Bosnian Serb ruling and opposition parties have temporarily put aside their animosities to slate the state Constitutional Court for its decision to annul the Bosnian Serb national holiday.

“This is unacceptable,” the President of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, told the media. “They can stick this decision you know where.”

Dodik said he would call a meeting of all Bosnian Serb parties and propose that the RS government ignore this decision.

RS representatives in state institutions should also withdraw from their posts until the decision is annulled.

Dodik has in the past threatened to pull all RS officials from state institutions, which some feared this could be a prelude to the eventual separation of RS from the rest of Bosnia.

Bosnia’s Constitutional Court on Thursday ruled that the official holiday of Republika Srpska, January 9, discriminated against other ethnic groups.

The ruling was a response to an appeal from the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) political leader, Bakir Izetbegovic, which he submitted in 2013.

January 9 marks the day in 1992 when Bosnian Serbs established an independent entity, Republika Srpska.

This date is also an Orthodox religious holiday, the day of St Stephen, which was the main reason why the Constitutional Court ruled that the holiday was unconstitutional, since it discriminated against people of other ethnic and religious backgrounds.

The Court gave the RS National Assembly six months to bring this law in line with the ruling.

“The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina is nothing but a Muslim court against Serbs,” Dodik added.

The state Constitutional Court is made up of three foreign judges, two Bosniaks, two Croats and two Serbian judges.

The vote on the holiday split the court on ethnic lines. The ruling was backed by the majority of three international and two Bosniak judges, against the votes of two Croat and two Serb judges.

In the past, Bosnian Croat and Serb leaders have criticized the Constitutional Court for the fact that the Croatian and Serbian judges are often outvoted by Bosniak and international judges.

Dodik’s statements were mirrored by other Bosnian Serb politicians who temporarily put aside their personal and political animosities.

The speaker of the RS National Assembly, Nedeljko Cubrilovic, from the National Democratic Union, DNS, which is also a part of the ruling coalition, said the assembly would ignore the ruling, which was “a political rather than legal decision.”

“Instead of looking at how to make a better life for people, we have a backstabbing struggle,” Mladen Bosic, leader of the main opposition Serbian Democratic Party, SDS, said.

The SDS is at odds with Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, and is part of the ruling coalition at the state level together with Izetbegovic’s party of Democratic Action, SDA.

He also called this decision “continuation of the policies of poking a finger in the eye of the other side.

“This decision has nothing to do with justice and law. It is a pure political decision,” said another opposition leader, Dragan Cavic, from the National Democratic Movement, NDP.

The Bosniak vice-president of Republika Srpska, Ramiz Salkic, from the SDA, said Bosniaks in the RS were willing to negotiate a new date for a holiday that was not an Orthodox Christian religious holiday.

“No one denies the RS’s right to have national holiday, but that can’t be a holiday only for the Serbs but of all of its citizens,” he said.