FIRST CONSTITUTION AND ASSEMBLY OF SERB PEOPLE LAID GROUNDWORK FOR REPUBLIKA SRPSKA

ISTOČNO SARAJEVO, FEBRUARY 21 /SRNA/ – The first Constitution of Republika Srpska, proclaimed 34 years ago, and the historic decision by Serb deputies in Sarajevo to establish the Assembly of the Serb People in BiH marked the creation of Republika Srpska, legal expert Ognjen Tadić told SRNA.

"The Assembly of the Serb People in BiH was founded on October 24, 1991, after Serb deputies were outvoted on October 14 in the Assembly of the Socialist Republic of BiH. The Assembly then called a plebiscite on whether the Serb people would remain in the joint state of Yugoslavia, in which nearly 100 percent of Serbs in BiH voted in favor of that option," Tadić reminds. He emphasized that Muslims and Croats did not recognize the results of the plebiscite, after which all Serb deputies from all parties in the Assembly of SR BiH continued their work within the Assembly of the Serb People in BiH and began adopting acts that constituted Republika Srpska. "Of the approximately ten constitutive acts that form the constitutional-legal basis for the creation of Republika Srpska, two are the most significant - the Declaration on the Proclamation of Republika Srpska and the Constitution of Republika Srpska. The Assembly of the Serb People in BiH adopted the Declaration on January 9 and the Constitution on February 28, 1992," Tadić stated. The Constitution of Republika Srpska is the only constitutional-legal act in the territory today referred to as BiH that was enacted prior to the war and that represents the result of the democratic will of the people. This essentially and permanently defined Republika Srpska as a peace-oriented and democratic community, founded on the right of the Serb people to self-determination and shaped to be a country for every person who lives in it, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, age, political affiliation, or property status. The vitality of this fundamental constitutional idea of Republika Srpska has not been diminished despite numerous amendments, including imposed ones that, according to Tadić, sought to undermine that core constitutional concept.