Source: "Blic"
Under our law, the protection of right to free access to information is achieved in two ways. In case of almost all public bodies it is achieved by lodging a complaint with the Commissioner for Information. The National Assembly, President of the Republic, Government, Republic Public Prosecutor, Supreme Court, Supreme Court of Appeal and Constitutional Court are exemptions against which a complaint with the Commissioner cannot be lodged, however, administrative proceedings can be instigated instead by filing a lawsuit.
In the course of last year, the Commissioner received over 1.500 complaints. Simultaneously, 2 lawsuits were filed with the Supreme Court against 6 above mentioned authorities for the purpose of instigating administrative proceedings. The interesting question is – Does this (un) believable small number of lawsuits against authorities, which doubtlessly handle a lot of interesting information, indicate high level of transparency of their work or the lack of trust in the efficiency and speed of administrative proceedings as a means to obtain the right to free access to information? Be that as it may, the Supreme Court was not without lawsuits regarding the right to free access to information in 2009. 35 lawsuits against the Commissioner’s decisions were filed. The ‘’interesting’’ paradox is that more lawsuits were filed by the first instance public authorities, whose complaints were rejected, than by citizens. The fact that they were doing this recalling the provision of the law under which ‘’administrative proceedings may be conducted’’ against the Commissioner’s decisions was even ‘’more interesting’’. May, but by whom? Layman are allowed not to know, but in the public authorities they have to know, because even law students know that the party may, but that in no proceedings, including these, the first instance authority cannot file a lawsuit against the second instance authority. Of course, the Court has rejected all such lawsuits as ungrounded, but the practice goes on. Lawsuits are filed , even though known that they would be rejected, and so, until they are rejected by the court, exercise of the right to transparency is postponed. Simply stated, the time paid by the citizen’s money (the taxpayers’ money) is being wasted in order to pull the leg of those very citizens. Doesn’t at least elementary decency, if not elementary professionalism, ordain doing away with such a practice?
