Source: Pravda
Commissioner for Information of Public Importance, Rodoljub Sabic, claims that there is no selectivity in the work of this institution.
In the article Dacic, resign published yesterday in Pravda , which was dedicated to the issue of media coverage and the attention media tend to give or not give to certain events or activities, a number of political analysts and members of the opposition expressed their opinion.- One of them, presumably acting in one of these two capacities, was Mr. Duaan Janjic, Director of the Forum for Ethnical Relations. Talking about the lack of information on the tragic circumstances in which protester Ranko Panic suffered serious injuries, and later died, the said gentleman said among other things: There is selectivity in the behaviour of institutions which deal with human rights, and it is politically motivated selectivity. By this I mean Rodoljub Sabic and non-governmental ogranizations, allegedly specialized for help. The most worrying thing is this selectivity for which, to make things worse, we do not know the criteria .
I can only assume that this evaluation of the Information Commissioner's work for is based on his observation that there was no formal intervention of the Commissioner in this case. There was no intervention, because there were no assumptions for that, says Rodoljub Sabic in his reaction. He says that the Commissioner for Information is a government body which does not act arbitrarily, but according to the procedure set by the law and that it is a body of second instance which handles complaints of citizens and other entities, which previously requested certain information from government body, and information was denied to them.
- I do not know whether anybody talked to the Ministry of Internal Affairs or any other body about this, i.e. about the information on the mentioned tragic event, but I know for a fact that no complaint was submitted to the Commissioner for Information. If a complaint had been submitted, I would certainly have decided about it. If I had passed a decision, anybody, even Mr. Janjic, would be in their full right to make conclusions on my impartiality based on this decision. As it is, we can only conclude that Mr. Janji indulged in unfair imputing, completely without arguments. This established, we must also examine whether this is just a case of criticism by someone who lacks basic knowledge of the procedure set by the law or something far worse. One would expect that a man with such education, and with evident ambition to seriously engage in social work, would know how the law defines the position of the Commissioner for Information and the procedure by which he acts. If this assumption is correct, then Mr. Janjic made a base attempt at deliberately misinforming the public - said Sabic.
Sabic points out that he has no intention to defend himself from Janjic's accusations for non-existent selectivity .
- I do not want to defend myself from such accusations, although Janjic seems to know what motivated it as well. He might have as well told us - if he knew. And before he allows himself to comment on the (non)selectivity of the Commissioner for Information, he could run a better background check with many members of the opposition or opposition press - said Sabic.
Inserted file: Come Clean
- I want to emphasize, not just because of Mr. Janjic, that my principled, personal attitude, repeated on countless occasions and well known, is that it is Government's duty to give as much relevant information as possible on all events of public importance. This attitude also refers to the tragic event in question. And the attitude of the Commissioner for Information, the attitude of an executive government body, formal, expressed in the form of a decision, can only be obtained in one way: by the procedure set by the law - i.e. only after complaint for previously denied access to information - emphasized Rodoljub `abi.
