Source: Glas javnosti
IT IS THE PEOPLE WHO FINANCE - RODOLJUB SABIC
Everyone shall be entitled to access information of public importance. On request, public authorities in possession of requested information shall grant access without delay and within 15 days at the latest. This is the wording used in the Serbian Law on Free Access to Information. Unfortunately, many cases encountered in the work of the Commissioner for Information stand as alarming evidence that this is not always respected.One of these is the recently resolved case of complaints lodged by the Assembly of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina against two national-level Ministries because of denial of access to a copy of the Concession Agreement for the Horgos - Pozega Highway. One of the two Ministries had taken recourse to complete “silence of administration”, which is inadmissible and even punishable under the Law, and remained “silent” throughout the whole affair. The other Ministry also remained “silent” during the 15-day period which the Law sets as the deadline for responding to a request and then, in violation of the Law, extended this deadline to 40 days, only to let this deadline pass without any response. The fact that the procedure set out in the Law has not been observed even in a case in which the requestor is the highest authority of a Province of necessity gives rise to a disquieting question - what can a citizen or a journalist expect in a similar situation?
Of course, the complaints were grounded, not only on account of procedural omissions, but also because the denial of access had no basis in substantive law. Indeed, the only the only reason quoted for denial was the allegation that it had been agreed with the concessionaire to treat literally all information in connection with the construction of the highway as “confidential”. And there was no explanation why. Obviously, this was neither necessary nor logically justified. Furthermore, the Serbian FOIA makes any denial of public access subject not only to the formal requirement that the information concerned is marked as confidential, but also to another requirement - n amely, it is necessary to prove that disclosure of the information could have severe legal or other consequences for overriding public interests that outweigh the public's interest to know. In this specific case it was not so and, o bviously, the public's right to know in this case outweighs the purely abstract “confidentiality”.
In principle, the public has the right to know everything in connection with the government's operations, in particular where large disposals of public money or other vital resources are involved. When some person or entity is entrusted with managing a vital public resource, such as a highway concession, the public has to know under what terms and conditions this is done. All the more so when a country has an exceptionally high level of corruption and a very low level of citizens' trust in the public authorities . In the Global Corruption Index, we have been given a poor score and we are tied for the “excellent” 90-92 place with Gabon and Surinam, while the percentage of Serbian citizens who trust their public authorities is desperately low. The best, indeed the only way to change all this is to ensure full accountability of public authorities' operations and availability of information on their work.
Besides, it is the duty of a democratic government to always expand the circle of information available to the public. It is expected to civilly respond to all requests filed by the citizens and the media and even to go beyond - to make as much information as possible accessible to the public without waiting for it to be requested. All information generated in the operations of public authorities is paid in advance with taxpayers' money and should serve to the maximum extent possible the interests of those who paid for it; it should serve the purposes of science, journalism, culture and business. An increasing number of public authorities worldwide post their databases on the Internet, thus making them available to the general public. To find a sound example, we need not look to far-away countries with long democratic tradition. The neighbouring Croatia is currently updating its Register of Concession Arrangements, which includes some 5,000 agreements. Mr. Suker, the Minister of Finance and the chief promoter of this activity, emphasized the basic idea was to make all those agreements available to the public, to make them accessible to all, not only to privileged circles, via the Internet. Is it (and why is it) a problem to make the same arrangements in Serbia?
