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Civil Rights Must Be Respected In Practice RODOLJUB ŠABIĆ
Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection
A real progress in implementation of the Chapter 23 will be when civil rights are respected in practice which is something that many government officials still find foreign. Their behaviour ranges from the routine aloofness to denying the public the right to find out how large public- and state-owned financial resources are used The latest criticism that Commissioner Rodoljub Šabić has received from the Prime Minister elect and his coalition partner is just a continuation of the disparagement he has been exposed to ever since the office of the Information Commissioner was established. The only thing that is different is a progressive growth of civil rights violations that come under his scope of work. Do yout hink that the media, which have overstepped all ethical boundaries in reporting about the recently committed crimes, are the first or the last link in the chain of nonfunctional state institutions?
— Sometimes they are the first, sometimes the last. The way they report often constitutes not only a breach of professional and ethical standards in journalism and trampling on the dignity of victims, their families and the public but also a breach of law. The media often 'analyze' a criminal act in a way that suggests that they have had a direct access to official investigation documents which, in turn, causes suspicion that the Law on Personal Data Protection and other laws (like the Law on Public Information and Media, Criminal Code and Code on Criminal Procedure) have been breached with the blessing from the people working for the state institutions. All of this speaks volumes
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about the need for the line ministry, the prosecution and the police to react, in addition to the Commissioner. Supervisory procedures conducted by the Commissioner in certain cases have confirmed that the state bodies have been 'leaking' information. However, in some cases, the media claiming that the information came from „relliable official sources“ is just a plain falsefood. Regardless of the situation – be it blindly trusting bad sources, or intentional spinning the news, or consciously „creating“ falsefoods for the purpose of boosting circulation – these prac-
rights? Are we talking about the rascals from the state administration or the usual systemic politically correct responses that we get from the government about respecting the rule of the law?
— Statistically speaking, ministries are institutions that have the biggest problems with respecting civil rights. In 2015, the Commissioner's office received 1,841 complaints against the state bodies which is a half of all the filed complaints. Almost fifty percent of these complaints – 846 – relate to the bodies that make the core of the state ad-
OF ALL POLITICAL PARTIES, THE SERBIAN PROGRESSIVE PARTY (SPP) HAS FILED THE BIGGEST NUMBER OF COMPLAINTS TO THE COMMISSIONER WHEN IT WAS IN OPPOSITION AND THE COMMISSIONER HAS RULED IN THE PARTY'S FAVOUR MORE THAN IN ANY OTHER CASE. ONCE THEY CAME TO POWER, EVERYTHING CHANGED tices should be denounced and dealt with. This includes not only journalist associations but also state bodies and institutions which reputation and authority are being smeared in this way. Further from that, it is very indicative and worrying that the said institutions often don't even react to such things, let alone deny any wrongdoing on their part. Considering your scope of work, which state institutions have failed the most in respecting civil
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ministration which is the ministries. However, we should not focus on statistics or quantity alone. I have been warning for quite some time now that the root of the problem regarding violation of civil rights has moved to the segment of large financial or material resources. In that context, it is very worrisome to see just how untransparent is the work done by state-owned and public enterprises which is the reason why I have submitted a special report to the Parliament.
There are many individual and group characteristics of the responsible officials which are causing problems when it comes to the public exercising their rights. They range from not fully comprehending the importance of human and public rights, a warped image of their own role, arrogance, and, in many cases, intentional activities on hiding their personal incompetence, lack of accomplished results, irrationality and even worse abuse of power, crime and corruption from the public. Should we feel despicable for reading such contents and are we to blame for being humiliated?
— There is a well-known political quote by Karl Marx who says that „every country has the government it deserves“. This could be expanded to include the media and the public stage. The situation in our media is incredibly worrisome, sad and desperate. What is even more alarming is the lack of committment on the society and the state's part to do something about it. And let's not even talk about the fact that the way our media work, and especially the tabloids, cannot be contributed to an unwanted or temporary incident but rather a concept or a method that is used in governing the public stage. This is not a coincidence but a result of the government's unwilligness to stop the wave of tabloidisation. People also doubt
