Who Is Rodoljub Šabić

Rodoljub Šabić is a Serbian lawyer, attorney and former politician, born on 15 October 1955 in Derventa. He is best known as the first Commissioner for Information of Public Importance in Serbia’s history, and later as the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection. He held the office from December 2004 to December 2018, in two seven-year terms and under seven different governments.

Before that, he worked in the federal administration under the government of Ante Marković, ran a law firm, and served as a member of parliament and Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly. In the governments of Zoran Đinđić and Zoran Živković, he was Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government.

Šabić is remembered as the man who built, almost from scratch, an institution to which thousands of citizens, journalists and civil society organizations now turn. He is also known to the wider public for his morning posts about Belgrade on social media, which were followed by more than 135,000 people during his mandate. What follows is his life story, from a childhood in Bosnia to the position of one of the most recognizable public officials in the country.

Early Life and Childhood

He was born in Derventa in 1955 into a family of Yugoslav leftists. His mother was named Stanka and his father Mustafa. He spent his childhood in several Bosnian towns, first in Sarajevo, then in Brčko and Tuzla. When he was twelve, the family moved to Belgrade, which has been his city ever since.

He has a sister, Jaca, an engineer who has lived and worked in Canada since the 1990s. Šabić identifies as a Serb.

Belgrade remained his lasting connection to the place he grew up in. He has described himself as a “Savamalac”, since he regards the area around Savamala as his own neighborhood.

Education

Šabić graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Belgrade. According to the Commissioner’s office, he also holds a master’s degree in law (LLM). He chose the legal profession of an attorney, which he later described many times as his true vocation.

Besides practicing law, he published numerous articles in scientific and professional journals, as well as in the daily press.

Beginning of His Career

He began practicing law in the office of the well-known attorney Filota Fila, father of the lawyer Tom Fila. As a relatively young lawyer, he continued his career in the federal administration of Yugoslavia. He worked in the cabinet of the federal secretary for justice in the government of Ante Marković, and at the start of the 1990s served as undersecretary for legislation.

In his words, that position promised a brilliant career for a lawyer in his thirties. However, the country fell apart, so he returned to practicing law, convinced that he would never again engage in politics.

After returning to law, he was for many years the managing partner of a Belgrade law firm. It had several attorneys and worked in a number of fields of law.

Political Engagement and Ministerial Office

He could not keep the promise that he would not return to politics. During the rule of Slobodan Milošević, many lawyers were pushed into opposition activities, and Šabić became part of the opposition as well. In September 2000, he was one of seven attorneys who led teams in seven towns in Serbia as part of the organizations CeSID and CEDS, with the aim of proving election fraud. Sources differ on the details, since some also list him as one of the founders of CeSID.

He took part in the changes of 5 October 2000, and was then elected a member of parliament and Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly. He says he performed that duty on a voluntary basis, without a salary, and lived off his legal practice. He was also politically active in the party Social Democracy, of which he was one of the founders, and then in the Social Democratic Party. He left the party when he was elected Commissioner.

Zoran Đinđić’s invitation to join the Government forced him to stop practicing law, since a minister cannot also be an attorney. After a government reshuffle in June 2002, he became Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, with the task of establishing that institution in Serbia. The date he took office is given differently (13 or 19 June 2002), so sources differ.

By his own account, the start was not easy, so he complained to Đinđić. The prime minister replied that he had invited him to help the government, not the other way around. Within a few months he finished work he was proud of. After Đinđić’s assassination, he stayed in the government of Zoran Živković until the end of the state of emergency.

In the summer of 2003, he submitted his resignation, although nobody had asked him to. He explained that he had already noticed that everything was being subordinated to party interests. According to Wikipedia, he left office on 16 October 2003.

First Commissioner for Information of Public Importance

When the Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance was being adopted in 2004, his name was mentioned as a possible candidate for Commissioner. Šabić saw it as a challenge he could not refuse. The National Assembly elected him on 22 December 2004 as the first Commissioner in Serbia’s history.

The beginning was almost surreal. By his own testimony, for six months he received not a single dinar from the state, nor office space, a telephone or even a paper clip. He even paid for the institution’s official stamp out of his own pocket. He used that period to cooperate with the non-governmental sector and to run a campaign explaining citizens’ rights to them. He toured the country, as he put it, “like a traveling salesman”.

The institution grew gradually. During his second term it had around seventy employees. As a result of the campaign, according to him, two thirds of requests today come from ordinary citizens, followed by journalists and the civil sector.

The Assembly re-elected him on 5 December 2011 as Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection. His second term ended on 22 December 2018.

Personal Data Protection

He received the mandate for personal data protection in 2009, after the law was adopted in 2008. According to him, in the first year he had around eighty cases in that field, while the latest report counted over 2,500, and in the last year of his term about 4,000. Most cases originate from citizens.

Šabić repeatedly warned that privacy in Serbia had long been at the bottom of the scale of values. He believed the reason was the decades-long dominance of collective values, such as the working class, the party, religion or the nation. Bringing a society to treat personal data the way old democracies do he called a “Copernican turn”.

Under his pressure, with a two-year delay, the Personal Data Protection Strategy and its Action Plan were adopted. Šabić claimed, however, that their fate was to be ignored. He was especially affected when, as he recounted, a parliamentary committee rejected 124 amendments to the Law on Personal Data Protection in 50 seconds, which he called humiliating.

The Commissioner also filed criminal complaints over the misuse of personal data. One example he cited was the database of the Privatization Agency, containing the data of about 5.2 million people, which, according to him, was discovered to be completely open. He also turned to the ministries over a police request for data about psychiatric patients at a healthcare institution in Kikinda.

Notable Cases and Relations with the Authorities

During his mandate, Šabić found himself at the center of several cases that drew public attention. In all the cases below, his own view of events is given, with the note that the other sides did not agree.

Savamala and the Prosecutor’s Biography

On election night in 2016, buildings were demolished in Hercegovačka Street in Savamala. Šabić was among the first to inform the public about it on social media. He later ordered that the professional biography of deputy prosecutor Sanja Đurić, who led the case, be made available to a citizen. The prosecution refused to provide it, so Šabić imposed fines. The Republic Public Prosecutor’s Office then filed a lawsuit to annul his act. Šabić maintained that a public official’s professional biography is not a secret.

The 2015 Military Helicopter Crash

The Commissioner also ordered the disclosure of a note in which the prosecution explained why it would not prosecute anyone over the 2015 military helicopter crash. Since the decision was not carried out, he imposed two fines. According to him, even that did not lead to compliance with the decision.

Lawsuits, Criticism and Letters to Pensioners

In May 2017, Šabić stated that the public prosecutor had filed 30 lawsuits against the Commissioner, of which 14 had been resolved by then, and the court had rejected 11. He also said that the authorities attributed various motives to him. According to a BBC report, the ruling party accused him of being a “foreign agent” and a mercenary. The State Audit Institution, according to his statement, carried out an audit of operations and found no irregularities. In July 2019, in the Assembly, the head of the SNS parliamentary group Aleksandar Martinović accused him of having worked for the media and non-governmental organizations, to which Šabić replied that none of it had anything to do with the truth. The Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia condemned Martinović’s statement.

In 2018, he filed a criminal complaint in connection with the letters that pensioners received from the President of the Republic and the Serbian Progressive Party. In his view, the personal data of so many people could not have been obtained in the way the party described. In the same year, he banned the processing of data from private communication devices without a court order, and the Ministry of Defense contested that. Šabić assessed that it was misinforming the public.

Greatest Achievements

Šabić saw his main task as building an institution that Serbia had not had before. When leaving, he judged that the task had been fulfilled flawlessly. Among his most important results are:

• creating the institution of the Commissioner practically from scratch, without premises or a budget in the first months;
• spreading awareness among citizens and journalists that the law on free access to information is a useful tool;
• a high rate of successful interventions, which according to him was 96 percent in 2015 and 92 percent in 2016;
• establishing competence in personal data protection and growth in the number of cases from around eighty to several thousand a year;
• more than ten awards for civic courage, the fight against corruption and media freedom.

Šabić stressed that the credit was not only his, but also that of the team he had built over the years. He also said that members of that team were experts of the Council of Europe.

After His Mandate

His mandate expired on 22 December 2018. His deputy Stanojla Mandić temporarily took over the office, because the Assembly did not immediately elect a successor. Milan Marinović was elected the new Commissioner in 2019.

Even before leaving, Šabić said that he is by vocation an attorney and that he expects to cooperate with the civil sector, possibly in the field of human rights. He practices law and publicly comments on the state of the judiciary and institutions. In June 2019, he assessed that the conditions for electing the new Commissioner were problematic, and in March 2023 he appeared on the podcast “Dobar, loš, zao”. According to the website bezbednost.org, he is a member of the Executive Board of the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy.

Private Life

Šabić is married and has one child. He rarely speaks publicly about his family. It is known that he lives in Belgrade and walks every morning with his dog Mile, a Jack Russell terrier, six to seven kilometers.

By his own account, he did not leave the civil service rich. In one conversation, he said that he is returning to practicing law and has not yet met the conditions for a pension.

Interesting Facts

• The walls of his office were decorated with replicas of works by the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, his favorite artist.
• His morning posts about Belgrade, featuring buildings, monuments and lesser-known facts, became a tradition, and the saying “I got up like Šabić” entered everyday humor.
• He said that he has slept little all his life and that “the Commissioner has no working hours”.
• According to him, during his 14 years in office he traveled 14 times, 11 of them within the former Yugoslavia.
• In March 2019, he posted a photo of an injury on his face, noting that he was sure it was not the result of a politically inspired attack.

Awards and Recognitions

According to the Commissioner’s office, Šabić received numerous recognitions from the professional community and the wider public for his work. He himself stressed that he never received any from the authorities. Among them are:

• 2006 – a special charter of the Association of Journalists of Serbia;
• 2007 – “Personality of the Year in the Fight for Media Freedom” (OSCE);
• 2008 – the “Best European” award (First European House);
• 2009 – “Knight of Vocation” (League of Experts);
• 2010 – “Reformer of the Year” (NALED);
• 2011 – an award for contribution to the fight against corruption (EU Delegation and the Anti-Corruption Council), “Personality of the Year” (OSCE Mission) and honorary membership of the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia;
• 2012 – “Contribution to Europe of the Year” (European Movement in Serbia);
• an award for tolerance (Blue Danube Foundation);
• the “Konstantin Obradović” award for improving the culture of human rights (Belgrade Centre for Human Rights);
• the “Dragoljub Stošić” charter for civic courage (for 2015), shared with Vesna Rakić Vodinelić and Saša Janković;
• 2016 – “A Good Example of New Optimism”, together with Saša Janković;
• 2017 – inclusion on the list of “Balkan Heroes”;
• 2018 – the April Award of the City of Šabac and a special award of the Human Rights House Belgrade.

The year 2014 also brought the BIRODI award to the Commissioner’s institution for the highest level of anti-corruption integrity.

Legacy and Influence

Šabić’s most important legacy is the institution he left behind. In fourteen years, the Commissioner grew from an office without premises into an authoritative state body to which thousands of citizens turn each year. The Law on Free Access to Information of Public Importance is now used daily as a tool by journalists and citizens.

His mandate was also the subject of political debate about the position of independent institutions in Serbia. Criticism of his work came from representatives of the authorities, while the professional community and civil society organizations highlighted him as an example of a responsible public official. In this text, all assessments are attributed to the sources that stated them.