2. DODIK IS A DEMOCRAT: Of course, the problem is not that there is no other Prime Minister in the world brave enough to say of his own parliament: "It is a gathering of superficial people." The problem arises when that same Prime Minister, who in better times was elected by the Parliament, wants to select the members of that parliament. Even though he has not held back from threatening members of parliament with beatings or offering them money for their vote, Dodik is the only Prime Minister in the world who rules with the genuine support of barely one fourth of the Parliament. Such survival in power, with a little support, to say the least, from the foreigners, is problematic for three reasons: first, it distances Dodik from the support of the voters. Second, it distances Dodik, the foreigners and RS from democracy. And third, and most important, it distances RS from having a government which is supported at the same time by both the people and the foreigners which is, as far as both Bosnian entities are concerned, a formula for prosperity. As it is, the message of the decisive support of the foreigners for Dodik broadcast to the Serbs is "Dodik is the only normal person in this entire nation" which is enough to make every normal Serb feel like a piece of shit.
3. DODIK WILL CREATE A MULTIETHNIC SOCIETY: He won't, because he has done nothing to explain to the average Serb voter, whom Krajisnik abandoned "prematurely", that he is a man from another film altogether; instead, he forcibly sought Krajisnik's support from the Hague. He won't, because he never had his picture taken with a Bosniak refugee who is returning home, which would show the Serbs that they are not coming here to eat them alive nor to snatch what little bread they have for their families from them. He won't, because every year he is convinced anew that he is supposed to win the elections through nationalist rhetoric while he is at the same time signing every single multiethnic decree that the foreigners place before him. However, it is less important whether BH will have a single electrical utility company or a single army. What is more important is the creation of a social structure which will function on the principle of openness. But Dodik is not open, not because he is a nationalist, but because he likes to do things on the sly and because the word society for him means nothing more than the team with which he just replaced some provincial director and then they all went out for a drink together.
4. DODIK WILL CREATE A NEW INFRASTRUCTURE: Prime Minister Dodik asks his minister: "And what is your opinion on this, Defense Minister Dodik?" And the latter replies: "I agree fully, Prime Minister Dodik, of course, if Police Minister Dodik and Transportation Minister Dodik concur." In other words, Dodik has succeeded in recreating the executive board of his municipality of Laktasi in the government. The problem did not arise due to the fact that he was holding six positions simultaneously; the problem arose when he had to be six different people in six different places. It took months for Dodik to realize that he cannot be the RS Prime Minister and the president of Bratunac municipality at the same time. When he finally got it, he took a bag full of money and set out on a tour during which only those with a sixth sense acquired during the previous regime understood, knowing what was carried in such bags and how this beast could be enticed out in the open. That is why there is little of his government outside of Banja Luka today and then only when he is replacing the directors of companies who belong to other parties. That is why after only two years in power, his own and related parties have spent more time in various scandals and misappropriations than they have in their own offices. In a word, Dodik did not appear on the scene with an idea and then begin injecting money to achieve it; he shortened the process by showing up with money after which no one cared about the idea anymore. This had the effect of drawing to his government and the Party of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), if there is any difference between the two, guys like Marko Asanin, the leader of the SNSD in Sarajevo who, in the 1998 elections ran as a candidate of the Serb Radical Party, and Vojin Mujicic, the head of the refinery in Bosanski Brod and the only Orthodox Christian who is making money in much the same way as an emir from Kuwait. We also have customs official Dragoljub Trivanovic, apparently the first businessman in the world to privatize customs, and many more people with whom one is more likely to get a year or two in jail than to win in the elections. As far as the mass of the best that RS had to offer, that in 1997 supported Plavsic and Dodik, today they are most prominent in the following districts: abroad or at least in the lines in front of various embassies; in the "reformed" SDS; in the Party of Democratic Progress (PDP) of Mladen Ivanic, which now also includes Branko Dokic, one of the rare politicians by vocation who was with Dodik and who apparently did not care to be treated in his own country as a migrant worker on vacation in his native village.
5. DODIK WILL IMPLEMENT THE DAYTON AGREEMENT: Perhaps the most on this topic could be said by those Serbs who five years after the war are still living in collective centers or by those Bosniaks who announced that they would camp out this fall in tents in front of Banski Dvor [seat of Srpska government in Banja Luka]. But they are fooling themselves that Dodik is an anti-Daytonite with nationalist predilections: obstructing Bosniaks from returning to Banja Luka only because they are Bosniaks would be a strategic initiative of Dodik's, albeit an ugly one, and he is hopelessly immune to strategic initiatives. His entire politics is based on asking his people over morning coffee: "What are we going to do today?" And refugees, by their very nature, are objects that can wait for another day. Just like all the other parts of Dayton which could not fit into the Jacques Klein's luggage.
6. DODIK WILL DEPOLITICIZE THE ECONOMY: Since the day during the war when trucks began to collide on RS territory carrying goods on which no customs duty was paid, some of which were controlled by Momcilo Krajisnik, while the others belonged to the former darling of Milosevic in the opposition, Milorad Dodik, the future RS premier, understood that economics not only cannot exist without politics but that it should not exist at all. He remained consistent in this belief later on even as he was passing out directorships to his supporters as if they were medals. Hence, the chief way to make money among Dodik's people: receiving companies on lease according to the principle "Here, you be the director; you'll pay when things get better for you." In the meanwhile, he personally and his people are pestering the foreigners with a strange mixture of begging ("give us something, may God give you a long life"), blackmail ("give us something, or the SDS will make a comeback") and racketeering ("give us something, we are defending RS from Milosevic and that costs money"). Due to all these factors, we can say that today the everyday survival of RS depends of the largesse of the foreigners and that in this state the only money which is not connected with politics is whatever the popcorn vendor in front of Banski Dvor makes. Hence, since the beginning of Dodik's rule the tendency has remained the same: with each passing day it has been more difficult to conduct business if the Prime Minister's supporters and other people with an official seal who like to answer to the name of the state were not "built into" the project.
7. DODIK SUPPORTS THE FREE MEDIA: "What would we do without the independent media?" said, on one occasion, believe it or not, Momcilo Krajisnik. Though in all honesty it was just after he became a part of the opposition. Dodik did not say this even when the international community gave him "Nezavisne Novine", whose criticism of the regime depends in direct proportion to whether Mile [Dodik] was involved in it or not. In the meanwhile, RS got Rajko Vasic as the information minister who. Like a veteran Kumrovec [native village of Croat Josip Broz Tito] employee in new packaging, Vasic concerned himself with counting the number of lines devoted to the Prime Minister in the papers in comparison with other, less important politicians. After this he replaced a bunch of editors, declared that the government news agency SRNA prior to its reorganization was "a terrorist organization", replaced one editor who put the headline of Dodik's statement dangerously close to a photograph of a monkey in the zoo, and sealed it all with Vasic's call on the public prosecutor to finally do something about those journalists unwilling to tow the line. The result: in the final tally, Dodik controls all the influential media in RS with the exception of two magazines ["Reporter" of Banja Luka and "Ekstra Magazin" of Bijeljina]. Dodik's media stable truly differs greatly from that of Milosevic. While Slobo's Radio Television Serbia, with complete honesty, hates democrats, whores and foreigners, Dodik's media does this in more subtle fashion: "Show me who isn't a democrat and I'll beat him to a pulp."
8. DODIK WILL HELP THE OPPOSITION IN SERBIA: Of course, this is the already old idea of the international community which was realized to the extent that Dragoslav Avramovic visited Laktasi, and Dodik demonstrated that he, too, has an equivalent of Milosevic's couch for secret political deals. Later on the general belief was that Serbia would be transformed by media from RS. Of course no one remember to ask the logical question: why has RS remained unchanged? In short, Dodik has as much of a chance, percentage-wise, of helping the opposition in Serbia as there are supporters of the Banja Luka team "Borac" among the residents of Belgrade [very few].
9. DODIK WILL ELIMINATE CORRUPTION: Considering the structure of the corruption pyramid in RS, the idea that Dodik can eliminate corruption can be realized in one of only two ways: That he lock himself up and throw away the key through a window or that he commit hara-kiri ("It's like an airplane colliding with a ship," he is said to have explained this ancient Eastern custom once upon returning from Japan.) Since both postulates are in violation of the journalist code of conduct, I will move on to the next misconception.
10. DODIK WILL BE A PART OF THE DEMOCRATIC FRONT IN RS AND BH: Perhaps, but for a start Zlatko Lagumdzija and Mladen Ivanic should stop running away from him. Instead, lest someone connect them to the democrat from Laktasi, they have nominated their own candidates in the presidential elections in RS by which both are doing a great favor for Mirko Sarovic, the candidate of the SDS. Wherein lies the rub? Connecting with someone means being prepared to share a common fate with him which neither Lagumdzija nor Ivanic have any intention of doing as far as Dodik is concerned. They are both counting on the long run, while in Dodik they see a man for one season. But Dodik in power is already playing the third season in a row. No matter, the role was a more challenging one. The role of the last leader of the pre-political era in RS.