Source: Pravda
Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information, in reaction to the text „SLS asks Sabic for answers", which has been published by „Pravda" it its yesterday edition, points out that he has in all disputable issues worked according to the Law on Free Access to Information, without any kind of discrimination.
Serbian Liberal Party has yesterday in their statement claimed that „Rodoljub Sabic refuses to influence receiving answers to the following questions, and they expressed hope that the answers shall be reached, and that Mr. Sabic shall not any longer discriminate for which questions he should give support, and for which he should not".Even the purported questions are quoted:
- Public announcement of the list with names of Belgraders who were shot after entry of Tito's partisans into our capital, as well as where were those people buried?
How big are foreign donations to NGOs and how big are the salaries of the key persons in those organizations?
- How much Belgrade citizens set aside for TV Studio B and how big are the revenues of the managers of that television? I hope that this statement from SLS isn't malicious, but is only an expression of lack of knowledge and understanding of the essence of Law on Free Access to Information of Public Interest and the role of the Commissioner for Information. In any case, I consider it my duty to inform the public in a correct way about this „problem". The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance is the state body acting in a way and following the procedure stipulated by the law, not by the idea that SLS or anyone else has about it. My collaborators have in telephone conversation informed the SLS representatives that according to the Law, information should be requested not from the Commissioner, but from the body in power who has them, and just after those are denied, one can in legal term lodge a complaint to the Commissioner, claims Sabic.
He says that „it has been explained to people from SLS that the complaint to the Commissioner can be lodged only against the legally stipulated bodies in power, thus excluding he possibility that the Commissioner should resolve possible complaints against NGOs".
- I do not know if SLS has according to the law requested information from TV Studio B, but, if it has, it didn't lodge the complaint based on that reason with the Commissioner. SLS has requested from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Serbia lists of people who were shot in Belgrade after entry of partisans, as well as the places of their burial.
Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Serbia has informed both SLS and the Commissioner for Information that it doesn't have the requested information, and according to their findings, BIA might have the requested data. According to that, the Commissioner has passed the SLS request to BIA and informed the Serbian Liberal Party about that, because according to Article 20 of the Law on Free Access to Information, new deadline for SLS' complaint in this case starts from the date of delivery of their request to the second body in power. I do not know if BIA has given any information to SLS, but I know that SLS hasn't lodged any complaint against BIA, which would be the basic assumption for Commissioner's intervention, says Sabic.
He is, having in mind the above mentioned „letting the public to estimate how much objective and realistically based are estimates on alleged subjectivity of the Commissioner for Information towards certain cases from his practice".
