Does the new Law on Freedom of Access to Information give the authorities room for abuse? And will it enable institutions to hide information of public interest from the public? The comments mainly refer to the fact that the Appeals Council at the Council of Ministers of BiH will decide on appeals.
KRISTINA SPAJIĆ-PERIĆ, chief and responsible editor of the Hercegovina.info portal
“As a portal, we have huge problems with getting answers, that means we send hundreds of inquiries, we don’t get answers to key questions, we deal with investigative journalism, we open difficult topics, and sometimes we have the impression that it is not in the interest of institutions to answer questions they don’t like. Unfortunately, the new legal solutions only allow them new alibis for why they won’t answer.”
A large number of institutions have so far ignored the requests of journalists and did not respond, and the new law is worse than the law we had, according to journalist Rubina Čengić. And, she explains why.
RUBINA ČENGIĆ, journalist
“The position for appeals is the body that will be formed by the Council of Ministers that also wrote the law, that’s one problem. And another, there is no longer such a precisely defined analysis of the public interest, as existed in the old law. I think that these are two key things that will open up space for the authorities to abuse the law and declare many information that should actually be public as non-public”.
BH journalists have objections to the adopted law in the part that refers to restrictions, i.e. prevention of access to information or exceptions in relation to the existing and previous legal framework.
BORKA RUDIĆ, Association “BH Journalists”
“The authorities are not actually moving towards complete openness to the public in terms of sharing public information and information of importance to citizens with the public and citizens, but are simply looking for space to hide as much information as possible from the public and that is the main objection. The second objection refers to the appeals procedure “.
VELIZAR ANTIĆ, political analyst
“Even in this new one, I don’t see a person who is responsible, if you as a journalist or some association of citizens or as an individual seek information from some public institution, mainly from those who exercise power”.
Transparency International BiH, following the process of adoption of the law, expressed objections to the text of the law and they believe that some solutions contained in the new law contain a high level of risk, and that we will have a worsening of the situation compared to the current situation.
SRĐAN BLAGOVČANIN, Transparency International BiH
“The way of proceeding in the second instance, i.e. when the first-instance authority decides not to publish the information, which is set to be decided by the appeals council at the Council of Ministers, we believe does not meet the basic criteria of international standards. Therefore, it should be decided by an independent body because the Council for appeals is not an independent body”.
Very soon we will be in a situation where, due to inadequate solutions, we are approaching amendments to the law on freedom of access to information, according to Transparency. Their position is also that the procedure of its adoption was not appropriate and that this is a good example of how the adoption of the law should not be approached, BHRT reports.
