Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection sent a letter to the Republican Public Prosecutor Zagorka Dolovac. The direct reason for the letter was the action lay by the Republic Public Prosecutor requesting the annulment of the Commissioner's ruling ordering to make available to the public the professional resume of the acting deputy public prosecutor in the Savamala case, but the Commissioner also pointed out in his letter to a number of other reasons that require a review of the attitude of the Prosecution’s Office towards citizens' rights to free access to information and personal data protection, as well as to the activities of the Commissioner that protects these rights by law.
The action against the Commissioner in the Savamala case, the Republic Prosecutor's Office lay under Article 11, paragraph 3 of the Law on Administrative Disputes, meaning, because of “violation of law to the detriment of the public interest”. As a provision which is allegedly violated it was indicated quiet anachronistic provision of the Law on Public Prosecutors’ Offices on “official secret”, which lost the legal force after the Law on Data Secrecy which was the lex specialis and lex posterior and which even does not recognize the term “official secret”. Equally important is one indisputable factual fact. The fact that not only resume of the Deputy Public Prosecutor, which is subject to the Commissioner's ruling, but also a number of other resumes has long time, even at the moment of action, and are now available to the general public through the website of the State Prosecutors' Council. The work of the State Prosecutors' Council, by law, is managed by the public prosecutor, who also manages the work of the State Public Prosecutor's Office. The fact that professional resumes of prosecutors are made available to the general public via the Internet, but at the same time the Commissioner's ruling ordering to make them available to the public is qualified as a "violation of the law to the detriment of the public interest" is absurd, is a legal oxymoron.
The Commissioner also commented on the statistical data on lying action pursuant to Art. 11 par. 3 of the Law on Administrative Disputes, recalling that the application of this concept is not a matter of arbitrariness, that means respecting the letter and spirit of the law and relevant standards, noting that statistics on actions lay by the Republic Prosecutor’s Office on the mentioned ground in general (which may be lay against hundreds of authorities) show that these actions are lay only (with perhaps only one precedent) against the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection.
Not wanting to speculate as to whether the Republic Public Prosecutor's Office wants with this practice to imply that the Commissioner is the only state body which “violates law and threatens the public interest”, the Commissioner assesses that, in an atmosphere where, unfortunately, the authorities violate laws in a massive and robust way, something like that is extremely unfair and unacceptable.
The Commissioner pointed out that human rights violations do not come, not even close to, adequate criminal legal response, stating that it is a sad reality of everyday coping with many serious violations of the right to information and the right to personal data protection, many of whom, to put it mildly, raise great suspicion in the commission of crimes also by officials, but at the same time that prosecution proceedings initiated on this occasion can be counted on the fingers of the hand.
