Source: Danas
The Coalition for Free Access to Information complained to Rodoljub Sabic and Sasa Jankovic about the work of the Bureau for Complaints and Petitions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia.
The Ministry has been verifying the signatures of 72,000 citizens for a year and it has been ignoring an order of the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance since November.
Belgrade - The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia has been ignoring for more than a year the request of the Coalition for Free Access to Information to answer, according to the law, where signatures of 72,000 citizens the Coalition collected and submitted to the National Assembly in December 2008 are at the moment, Zdenka Kovacevic, representative of this coalition of NGOs and chairperson of the Managing Board of "Sretenje" Association from Pozega, said for "Danas".
By these signatures, the Coalition wanted to start the initiative to pass as soon as possible the Law on Classification of Information and to adopt amendments to the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance.
Invoking the Law on Free Access to Information, the Coalition requested of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to answer where the documentation with citizens' signatures was at the moment because the police should have verified their validity. Because of the "silence of administration", i.e. the fact that the Ministry of Internal Affairs has not replied for a year, the Coalition complained to Commissioner for Information Rodoljub Sabic and Republic Ombudsman Sasa Jankovic.
- The Ombudsman initiated in December last year procedure of control of legality and regularity of operations of the Bureau for Complaints and Petitions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs because of the violation of principle of good administration, untimely work and violation of the right to free access to information of public importance - Mrs. Kovacevic said. This procedure is still underway.
Ms. Kovacevic said for "Danas" that the Coalition first submitted in October 2008 to the Bureau for Complaints and Petitions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs request for access to information on authenticity of 72,000 collected signatures of citizens. Since the Bureau did not reply within the deadline set by the law, a complaint was lodged to the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance who passed the decision on 18 November by which he ordered the Ministry of Internal Affairs to submit requested information.
- There was still no reply, so we lodged a complaint on operations of the Bureau to Ombudsman Sasa Jankovic because we think the Ministry of Internal Affairs violated the right to free access to information - Zdenka Kovacevic explained.
Interfile: Draft Law in February
In the meantime, the Ministry of Justice founded the task force which should develop Draft Law on Classification of Information by 15 February, Mrs. Kovacevic said. The task force consists of representatives of both the Coalition and state security services - Military Security Agency, Security Information Agency and Intelligence Agency at the Ministry of External Affairs.
According to her, the Coalition will monitor activities of the task force and react to possible disputable proposals. The aim of this law is to clearly define official, state and military secrets. This instrument must be adopted for security reasons, prevention of abuse of the confidentiality mark, but also because of the EU standards.
