Source: Danas
Who has hidden the proposals of the Information Access and Secret Classification Acts?Rodoljub Sabic
Personal attitude
Each year, according to the law, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance submits Report to the National Assembly. Those reports, besides else, always contain recommendations for eliminating the envisaged shortcomings, including the proposals of the necessary changes of the Free Access to Information Act, as well as pointing out to the need for passing some laws that do not exist in our country, and which are of extraordinary importance for establishing normal relations in the information access sphere.
All three Commissioner's Annual Reports written so far, together with the proposals, have been discussed in the Assembly Board in charge, Culture and Information Board and have been unanimously adopted. Besides that, the Commissioner for Information has several times warned the Government of Serbia of the need to amend the Free Access to Information Act, as well as to pass some laws. The Government, proposing authority of the law with "monopolistic" position has never challenged those evaluations.
Otherwise, the amendments that should be effected in the Act on Free Access to Information of Public Importance pertained primarily to establishing normal supervising mechanism for Law implementation, making responsibility for Law violation more strict, and provision of, in the case of need, forceful execution of the Commissioner for Information's decisions, so they had to do with the things necessary for law implementation. And as lacking laws were quoted Secret Data Classification Act, Personal Data Protection Act and the Secret Services' Files' Treatment Act, so those are laws that only Serbia doesn't have, of all European post-socialism countries.
However, three years have passed, and not any adequate law proposal has appeared in the Assembly.
Actually, it appeared lately, and that brings us back to the question we have started with.
Namely, a couple of months ago, within the civil sector activities have been prepared the proposals of the Law on Amendments of the Law on Free Access to Information of Pubic Importance and the Secret Classification Act. Then more than 70,000 signatures of support by the citizens have been collected, so the both proposals have been, according to the Constitution, formally proposed to the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia. Simultaneously, that event has rightfully attracted important publicity, however, today on the National Assembly website, in the column "Laws in the procedure" you can not find the proposals of those two laws. They were there, but are now gone. They have simply vanished, as a mirage.
That "vanishing" besides else, for instance means that the Ministry of Culture shall still be in charge of supervising implementation of the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance. It shall remain in charge besides the fact that it is obviously completely helpless to implement this competence. For executing this extremely complex obligation understanding monitoring status in around 11,000 subjects and besides that undertaking measures for initiating offense procedures against law violators, the Ministry has available only one man. This data makes any comment redundant, isn't it?
Vanishing also means that we shall, pending further events, remain the only country in Europe that does not have Secret Data Classification Act. Simultaneously we shall have too many secrets.
Of course, when instead of one modern law you have confusing and contradictory set of several hundreds of anachronous regulations, then it is possible to have everywhere classified status information. And such status is accorded to them by who knows whom, based on expandable, unclear, subjective and disputable criteria. And normally, anything can hide behind that confidentiality, from stupidity to conservatism, from laziness and negligence to criminal and corruption.
Vanishing of the proposed laws means survival of many other, evidently bad things. In such state of affairs it is really unacceptable to have a civil initiative for passing of the two mentioned Acts eaten by the gloom". Because it is obvious that the existing status suits only those who mystify and hide illegitimate operations" and "combinations", while it is directly opposing the interests of the state and of the huge majority of citizens. Those reasons, but not less the need and maybe the obligation to show to the citizens, not only to participants of this specific initiative, but to all, that constitutional rights really mean something, that they are not something that anyone can play with, clearly show to the responsible persons the only correct, real exit from this situation. That they should find and adopt the "missing" law proposals, or propose and adopt without delay other, better ones.
