The Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection warned today all the entities exercising the office at various levels or dispose with public powers, money and goods, and they are the holders of obligations under the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance, that nothing even the pre-election atmosphere, maybe the reason and justification for inadequate attitude towards rights of the public.
In this regard, the Commissioner believes that the growing number of complaints is alarming. Only in February this year 551 cases in the field of freedom of access to information were recorded, the vast majority of these cases are complaints.
The Commissioner Rodoljub Sabic stated the following:
"Obligations to the public and citizens are primarily something that is determined and regulated by law and that by itself should be sufficient. However, I will add that there is no coincidence thattransparency in our National Anti-Corruption Strategy is raised to the rank of one of the few fundamental principles. The Strategy explicitly provides for guarantees of transparency in decision making process and their implementation, as well as enablesthe citizens to access information in accordance with the law.
Transparency is not, of course, only important from the point of fight against corruption, but also from the point of real implementation of a series of transition goals and principles which a democratic society is based on, such as - good governance, democratic control of power, rationality, accountability and so on. In this respect, I will remind you that I delivered at the end of the last year to the National Assembly, a Special Report considering the serious problems in the implementation of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance in state-owned enterprises, which the Assembly, which was soon dissolved, did not consider.
Underestimating the importance of facts indicating the lack of understanding and disregard of obligations to the public, especially when it is accompanied by a chronic lack of accountability for violations of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance, certainly and inevitably departs from achieving these goals. "
