Source: Danas
What kind of information about the state authorities, public has the right to know Rodoljub Sabic
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In your estimated paper, in section "Business", 3. of March, it's been published under a title "When it's hard: Loncar", an interesting text of miss Ruza Cirkovic, which is the reason why I am writing to you.
Even though I am basically apt to the dispute, I unwillingly react on the texts of journalists. I think actually, that the dispute with media representatives, it's not easy to bring the whole harmony with my function, in other words, my duty to protect their rights. In concrete case, to justify that my not responding, was saying also that I mostly agreed to the attitude of miss Cirkovic in the text. Although, being mentioned a few times in the text, I think it has sense to use that as a cause to show some facts, relevant for the topic of the text.So, remembering one of our conversations, in which I was telling her that the accessions to the information, a domain of privacy of the state authorities, according to the law, very restrictive, miss irkovic ask the readers, in the context of present political situation, - "What do you think, are the members of our government giving us now a cause to ask them: where did they spend last eight years of summer vacation on the West or in the East, where are their children studying, on West or in the East, where are their children working - in Serbia or on the West, do they speak Russian? I think that they are not just giving us the cause for these question, they are provoking us that much that we can do more than just ask. I don't know what does Sabic think about that?"
So, when I am already been "asked", I will say that I believe, like most of the people of this country, that the representatives of our political elite are owing every day to the public to answer many, important questions. They usually do that referring to the information that is in the sphere of their "privacy". No matter what I think as Commission for the information of the public interest, I am not able to do a lot. Duty in mentioned and similar cases is not about the law of free accession to the information of public interest. Actually, this law in our country, like anywhere in the world, enables the accession only to those information that are in the possession of Government, and not in the possession of individuals in Government. Duty of offering the information, in the second case, is not legal, but it should be the issue of the political culture, the expression of duty to the public, meaning correct relation with the people and electors.
Only, one peace of the information of the field of privacy of public officials should have been in the possession of Government. It is about the information that refers to their incomes and possessions. Actually, law about stopping the conflict of interest explicitly foresees duty of officials to submit, every year and two years after his functioning, to the Republic sector for solving the conflict of interest, a report about the possessions and incomes.
But with this law it is explicitly foreseen that this information are not accessible for the public, so they can be used only in the Republic sector, for the needs of the Procedure in front of the Republic Board. I don't think it is a good solution. I believe that the publication of these information, or very part of it, would
contribute to the fight against the abuse, corruption and establishment of so deficit trust into the Government, i.e. representatives of Government. Many times I publicly claimed for the law to enable transparency of these information. Of course, I wasn't the only one in these attentions. But there were a lot of those, relevant who thought different, so they remained without effect, for now. The best way of proving the (un) preparence of the "politic elite" to make available the "private" information, if not for the public, but then just for the inter, state control mechanism, is the information that of nearly 13 thousand people with the status of officials in 2006; just less than half of them completed their duty to the Republic sector, to bring the reports. And in 2007. that number is halved again.
These information do not require a comment, they are saying for it selves. And they are not the only ones who are saying about the irresponsible relation of the Government or people in it, to their own duties, especially ones that are, or can be in correlation to the right for the public to know. And that is probably the only answer to the direct question of miss Cirkovic- Is it time for us to do somethig more than just a queation?
