The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection sent a letter to the President of the High Judiciary Council and to the Minister of Justice, expressing disatisfaction and concern because of the lack of steps he expected to see taken, after his previous warning that was intended to focus their attention to, to put it mildly, the abstruse situation regarding the actions of the First Basic Court in Belgrade in case no. 9-И-26531/11.
In assessing that the absence of these steps, may they be due to lack of will or lack of power, can have harmful and far-fetched consequences that are much beyond the importance of a court case, the Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic added:
"The First Basic Court has pronounced itself incompetent and refused to carry out the execution, or to start the enforced collection of financial fines that the Commissioner imposed, acting under the law, on the Higher Court in Belgrade. The Court made the decision on the complaint that the Commissioner filed, instead of within 5 days (as defined by the law and whose omission the law defines as "negligence") only after 90 days, and even that, after I addressed the Supreme Court and the Ministry of Justice.
If the flagrant inefficiency may be, to a point, explained by the severe overburden of the court, something else, which is more important, remains inexplicable.
Specifically, the Court has pronounced itself incompetent, although all other courts act as competent authority upon Commissioner's proposals for execution, and this court has also acted as a competent authority upon the proposal for execution in an identical case with a different defendant, it allowed, i.e. realized the proposed execution of the collection.
In a situation like this, Serbian supreme judiciary needs to answer to questions raised by the Serbian public. How is this caricature situation possible and how is it explained, that all courts in Serbia are competent to act upon Commissioner's proposal, except for one? And how is it possible and how is it explained that that Specific Court was also competent, only to become incompetent in case against a court that is superior in hierarchy, the Higher Court in Belgrade? If such "convulsive" court behavior is possible in a procedure involving a state institution, what is an "ordinary" citizen to expect?
The fact that the First Basic Court decided on such a "Copernican" change of competence assessment in a case in which the Higher Court in Belgrade has been grossly violating the right of the party to the proceedings for over a year, by not acting upon the Decision of the Commissioner, and by not paying the imposed fine, although it is obliged to do both according to the law, casts an additional shadow on the situation.
The need for all of us to contribute to the shaken reputation of our judiciary is undisputed. However, this is impossible unless the people from the judiciary, regardless whether they have been driven by false solidarity, respect for the hierarchy, or even something worse, make moves that raise more than reasonable doubt in the support for the principle of legality and justice."
