In connection with yesterday’s announcement of the High Judicial Council that it “never received a request from the Judges’ Association of Serbia for access to information and that it informed the Commissioner for Information about that”, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection said that the announcement certainly does not contribute towards provision of objective information to the public.

The Commissioner considers that efforts of all responsible persons should be aimed at making all relevant information on the procedure of general appointment of judicial officials available to the public instead at unnecessary public polemics over this issue. But taking into account that the announcement of the High Judicial Council indirectly implies possible negligence or omission in Commissioner’s work, Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic considers it is his duty to point to the following:

“It is true that the High Judicial Council wrote among other things in its statement submitted on the Commissioner’s request in connection with complaint lodged by the Judges’ Association of Serbia that it did not receive a request from the Judges’ Association. However, this statement could not hold as a serious argument even in layman communication and it certainly cannot hold value in process communication between two public authorities.

It is a notorious fact that the date of receipt of a writ at the registry office is considered to be the date of receipt of that writ by the authority to which it was submitted. A copy of the request submitted by the Judges’ Association bears a filing stamp which confirms that the request was received on 30 December 2009 at the registry office of the Administration for Joint Services of the Republic Bodies which, apart from other authorities, act as the registry office for the High Judicial Council as well.

Whether and how the request was lost at the registry office after receipt, whether it “disappeared” at the registry office, somewhere between the registry office and the High Judiciary Council or at the Council itself and whether it was a result of negligence, irresponsibility, poor organization or something much worse – these are all important questions which should be answered. However, it cannot affect the procedural position of the Judges’ Association of Serbia as a complainant that submitted the request in accordance with the law, according to which the Commissioner acted as well.

Finally, even if we ignore all of the above, the Commissioner himself also submitted a copy of the request of the Judges’ Association of Serbia to the High Judiciary Council on 21 January 2010 together with a complaint to the statement. As it had not acted earlier, the High Council should have acted on the request then, particularly taking into account the fact that it wrote itself in the statement that there was no reason not to reply to the Judges’ Association of Serbia.”