This is a re-posted opinion piece.
Didn’t President Aquino admonish media to stay out of his so-called “love life”? Why then does it seem that he himself keeps bringing it up in his public utterances? It was obviously said in jest, but his remark that he is “not completely comfortable” with the proposed Freedom on Information (FOI) bill because “people may use it to dig into his love life” is uncomfortably inappropriate. It appears to make light of the seriousness of the plight of a citizenry virtually helpless in controlling corruption in government.
Indeed, why the heck should anyone care about whether this confirmed bachelor is serious about anyone he may or may not be dating? What we should all care about is whether he, as president of this country, is in fact serious about his supposed commitment to a much ballyhooed anti-corruption effort. Based on his continuing inaction on a law that would guarantee the public crucial access to information about the goings-on in government, his seriousness about attacking corruption in government must be seriously doubted. Is he or isn’t he serious (about corruption, not dating)?, that is the question.
The FOI bill did not even make it to the list of 23 priority bills submitted by Mr. Aquino to Congress — meaning that FOI must be, at best, priority number 24 — and was completely ignored in the President’s second State-of-the-Nation address. Thus, the public is now being served a litany of excuses for this apparent neglect. Presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said that Mr. Aquino “wanted more time to study and flesh out the bill.” Communications Secretary Ricky Carandang said that there was a need for still more consultations so that they can craft a bill that would “balance the interests of the government, media, and the public.” Presidential explainer Manolo Quezon explained that Mr. Aquino was trying “to find a happy balance between information provision and confidential government information.”
The President’s mouthpieces make it sound as if this is the first time that Mr. Aquino has encountered this creature called FOI. In fact, the FOI bill has been floating around Congress for all the years Mr. Aquino was there and it was finally passed by both houses sometime in 2009. Then-Senator Aquino voted for Senate Bill 3308 then. As presidential candidate later, he promised to prioritize the passage of an FOI law.
Today, however, he has discovered that he has “objections and reservations.” It seems that Mr. Aquino as president no longer wants the public to have the same access to government information as he did as an opposition senator. Being on the other side, the potential target rather than the shooter, clearly makes a difference in one’s perception of where the “happy balance” might lie. Whereas Mr. Aquino then voted for the public’s right to know, he now curiously stands for the government’s right to keep things hidden from the people.
According to The Access Initiative, an international network of civil society groups working on what is referred to as “access rights” (TAI’s Philippine partner is the Ateneo School of Government), the people in an open, democratic society must have “the right to obtain government information, the right to participate in government decision-making, and the right to seek justice.” Advocates of access rights are now rightly concerned that the growing number of exceptions that “flesh out” the Aquino version of an FOI bill will make public access to information more restrictive rather than freer. Only corrupt government officials may turn out to be happy with the “happy balance.”
The FOI bill approved previously (by the 14th Congress) already contained a rather comprehensive list of exceptions relating to specified conditions involving national defense, foreign relations, law enforcement, personal privacy, trade secrets, and legal proceedings. That bill however added the qualification that allowed the disclosure of even the excepted information if “[T]he public interest in the disclosure outweighs the harm to the interest sought to be protected by the exceptions.”
Significantly, Mr. Aquino wants now to remove the public interest qualification at least insofar as “executive privilege” is concerned. Thus, he effectively wants “executive privilege” to be absolute, which is rather like what ex-President Arroyo herself wanted. He and his advisers are also trying to expand further the list of exceptions to include matters that the government might claim are related to national security (a notoriously abused catch-all) and to matters involving ongoing policy discussions. Not content with these additional restrictions on access, they further want to create a powerful “Information Commission” — whose members would be appointed by the President — who would rule on the “legitimacy” of requests for information and who could permanently ban the disclosure of information. Just imagining the power of such a commission should send shivers up the public spine.
Mr. Aquino and the members of his cabal also want to remove any criminal liability for non-compliance with the provisions of their version of an FOI bill. In other words, they want a toothless bill that can be safely ignored completely by public officials.
One must wonder, is the picture of an open and transparent government that Mr. Aquino keeps “sloganizing” for us fading from view? Has he forgotten that transparency is an absolutely essential element in a serious anti-corruption campaign?
Actually, a recent audit conducted during the period September 2010 and April 2011 by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism on the transparency of Mr. Aquino’s government found that it is not very transparent. Testing how the 27 national agencies surveyed (including Malacañang) responded to actual requests for information — in this instance, for Statements of Assets and Liabilities of government officials — the PCIJ reported that only 20 out of 35 requests were granted, 7 were denied, and 8 were still pending after 15 days.
PCIJ’s Malou Mangahas pointedly observed, “The Office of the President is among the topnotchers in denying transparency.” Might we conclude therefore that Mr. Aquino shows a lack of seriousness in eradicating corruption and in building that daang matuwid? Must we resign ourselves yet again to the tiresome tableau of politicos just playing games with government?
==============================================================================
By: René B. Azurin — Strategic Perspective
Source: Business World, Sept. 14, 2011
To view the original article, click here.
Comment here