Source: Blic

Comments  
Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information  
Constituting of the new composition of Serbia's National Assembly will certainly provide us with specific, indicative information of public importance. The gender structure of the new composition of the Parliament, or more precisely, the number of women in it, will strike another keynote for thinking about the issue - gender equality, an issue which was otherwise much exploited by many political parties in the pre-election campaign.  

Source: Borba

The constant great inflow of complaints which the citizens, mass media and others forward to the Commissioner, speaks for itself about how a large number of the bodies of the authorities find it hard to change their attitude towards the right of the public to free access to information which is in the possession of the authorities. More than 560 complaints were forwarded to the Commissioner in the first four and a half months of this year and this shows clearly that the authorities must change their attitude much faster towards the guaranteed right by the constitution and law. Illusions or even worse, insincerety, hypocrisy stand behind endeavours for an efficient fight against abuse and corruption, as well as for the freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of mass media and many other democratic freedoms, it this is not backed up by actual readiness to provide the public with the freedom of access to the widest possible scope of information.

Source: Blic

comments

Rodoljub Sabic, Commissioner for Information

A long time ago, in the middle of the century before last, a very important man in our politics, at that time an earl and aspirant to the throne, later king Petar I Karadjordjevic, translated to Serbian the famous work by John Stewart Miles ''About freedom'' making it thus possible for generations of our politicians to get acquainted in their mother tongue with the ideas of the great founder of liberalism. One of these which has been built into the very foundations of tolerance and democracy is that ''if an individual has a different view from the rest of mankind, it would be equally unjustified if mankind were to shut up this one individual, just as if this one person, if he had such power, were to shut up the whole mankind.'' 

Source: Blic

Those who are familiar with our public scene know that one should not have illusions about things such as cultural limits, minimum argument standards, correctness etc. In our country, such things are at the rudimentary level, they barely exist. In our reality, a bunch of lies, disqualifying statements and insults poured out at an public officer by the Director of the Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) in an interview to daily papers, and even “editorial policy” of RTS which in the interview of its boss recognizes the news of national importance and (re)broadcasts in its informative program lies and insults, are really not the phenomena which deserve particular attention. 

Source: Politika

Consistent implementation of the Law on Access to Information of Public Importance is very important basis for strengthening of democratic institutions in Serbia and the country's efforts to take part in European integration, it was said yesterday at the meeting of Serbian Minister of Culture Vojislav Brajovi and his associates with Commissioner for Information Rodoljub Sabic. 

Source: Blic

Comments

Rodoljub Šabic, Commissioner for Information

The media have recently given much coverage to the criticism of the Energy Observer, a web site specialized for energy issues, addressed to the Energy Agency and the Energy Efficiency Agency. Claiming that the Agencies did not justify their existence, that no new generation plants had been built for decades, that there was a threat of crisis and restrictions, the Energy Observer called on the management of the two Agencies to resign. The attention of the media was attracted by the criticisms (which are yet to be verified by experts in the field) and the calls for resigns, but the least attention was given to what deserved to be criticized most - the calls for the Agencies to inform the public how much money they have spent since their foundation, i.e. what is their annual cost.