SARAJEVO: The High Representative for Bosnia, Christian Schmidt, on Saturday annulled controversial rulings by Bosnia’s Serb entity refusing to recognise the decisions of the Balkan nation’s Constitutional Court.

Lawmakers in Bosnia’s Serb entity on Tuesday voted to suspend recognition of rulings made by the Constitutional Court, in a move that was likely to inflame ethnic tensions in the deeply divided country. Tuesday’s vote was the latest in a series of inflammatory political moves engineered by Bosnia’s Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who has long campaigned for secession from the country’s central institutions.

On June 21, the Republika Srpska (RS) parliament also adopted a law designed to render inapplicable in this Bosnian Serb entity the decisions taken by the International High Representative, whose role is to ensure compliance with the Dayton peace agreement that put an end to the intercommunity war in the country in 1995.

Bosnia has been governed by a dysfunctional administrative system created by the Dayton agreement that succeeded in ending the conflict in the 1990s but largely failed in providing a framework for the country’s political development.

In accordance with the agreement, Bosnia has been divided into two bodies — a Muslim-Croat federation and a Serb entity, known as Republika Srpska. The two entities are connected by a weak central government.