Nezavisne novine: Neither government in BiH plans to open public sessions, even though the concept of an open government is one of the main conditions for European Integrations.
Namely, in the five European requirements towards BiH, when speaking of the public administration reform, first requirement relates to the openness of sessions of governments and publicity of work of the government authorities.
Besides of an open government, in the public administration reform, Europe requires from BiH separating of politics from administration, professionalization of civil service, responsibility in work and control of spending of public funds, as well as general strengthening of administrative and judicial capacities.
However, neither the Council of Ministers, nor the Government of the RS and the Government of the FBiH plan to open the sessions for public in such manner that media can follow the whole duration of sessions.
In the Government of the FBiH they justify this by a lack of capacities, or by an absence of technical conditions.
"Rooms in which the sessions of the FBiH Government are being held, in Sarajevo and Mostar, are of such technical characteristics that only the Government members and the officers, who are preparing and following work of the Government, can be inside", has been stated in the announcement delivered to us by the Public Relations Office of the FBiH Government.
In the RS Government they explain that bringing the journalists into the rooms of sessions of the RS Government has not been enabled by the Rulebook, which stipulates that journalists and other representatives of public should not be present at the Government sessions.
However, as it has been stated, the Government has been enabling the public several times to follow the sessions through media.
"An example is the sessions of the RS Government, at which there has been opening of tender for privatization of the 'Telekoma Srpske', at which journalists were present and the sessions was directly transmitted by public service of the Radio-television RS", has been stated in the announcement of the Government’s Bureau for Public Relations.
In the RS Government they further say that they fulfill the conditions related to the publicity of work through giving the announcements for public and the information through informing, holding the press-conferences, giving the interviews, leading the conversations between the Government members and media, as well as publishing the information on the Government’s portal.
Similar to this has also been said in the Council of Ministers of BiH, and added that the public can request the information through the Intelligence service.
Amira Krehić, Executive director of the Center for a free information access, claims that the governments in BiH do not do openly enough and that they should let the public follow the sessions directly through media.
"The governments should be open as it is everywhere in the world, except for some delicate decisions, which need to be closed in case of voting, in order to protect the individual in the process of collective decision-making", she has said.
In the Croatian non-governmental organization-GONG, which follows the publicity of Croatian institutions, they say that the sessions of the Croatian Government are open for media and that accredited journalists receive the agenda and all the materials before the session.
"During the session opened for public, the Government can decide that the deliberations on specific issues from the agenda must be continued without the media presence, and keep the materials marked by a certain rate of confidentiality from availability from public", has been said in GONG.
In cases of closed sessions, as it has been said in GONG, the Public Relations Office gives the announcement within an hour after the session at the latest, except for cases that the Government decides not to inform the public on some issue.
Srđan Dizdarević, chairman of the Helsinki committee for human rights of BiH, says that a responsibility for insufficient publicity of the BiH governments is on the government and the citizens as well.
"The more democratic is the government, the more open it will be, and oppositely. The more it is authoritative, the more open it will be. Second part of the problem is in citizens, who do not demand from their government better openness", he has said.
As an example, Dizdarević mentions that in France, when speaking of defense, for example, the secret is only one data – number of nuclear submarines.
"Civilized governments are reducing the number of secret data to the smallest possible measure", he has said.