The executive and legislative authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) are still not ready for proactive transparency in the decision-making process, and citizens are not familiar with the proposed laws and decisions adopted by councils at various levels of government, Transparency International’s (TI BiH) research shows, so the public, for example, is not aware of the adopted amendments to the Law on the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC).
According to the overview of the level of proactive transparency conducted by the organization TI BiH, the Council of Ministers of BiH, the governments of the Federation, Zenica-Doboj Canton (ZDC), and Brcko District are the only ones that publish minutes from the meetings.
“If plans, work reports, and adopted laws are not available to the citizens, what kind of attitude towards the citizens are we really talking about and what kind of government is that in general,” TI BiH stated.
The research showed that shortcomings were also observed in the legislative branch. The level of proactive transparency in terms of regular and up-to-date publication of planning documents of parliaments is satisfactory only at the level of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska (NARS) and the five cantonal parliaments from the Posavina, Tuzla, Bosnian-Podrinje, West-Herzegovina, and Zenica-Doboj cantons.
Srdjan Blagovcanin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of TI BiH, believes that it should not be emphasized how important proactive transparency is both for strengthening political responsibility at all levels in BiH and for enabling citizens to participate in decision-making. What is disputed relates to the publication of data and reports on the work of institutions, but also on decision-making processes, he said.
“We have a glaring example at the state level, which is actually a practice, that the proposed laws, when they pass the Council of Ministers, are not actually published, and there we have a situation where the public practically has no insight into the form and text of these laws. An example is the recently adopted Law on the HJPC of BiH, which is among 14 priorities, and we, as a public, still have no insight into the text in which it was adopted,” explained Blagovcanin, adding that such practice must be changed.
He also recalled that the Law on Freedom of Access to Information of BiH is also disputed because the public did not know in what text that law was proposed.
“We are not satisfied with the proposed solutions contained in that law, we believe that adequate protection mechanisms for access to information are not provided, I am especially referring to the provision of second-level protection of the right to access information”, he stated, as well as that the proposed solution in which the Appeals Council is the second-instance body is not satisfactory, but that he believes that in that case a specialized body is needed that has the capacity and expertise to apply the law, Detektor reports.
E.Dz.
