By Toby McIntosh
Supporters of freedom of Information legislation in Ghana continue to wait for Parliament to prepare a report on last summer’s national consultations about the long-delayed bill.
Some members of Parliament recently lamented that President John Evans Atta Mills has not delivered on his promise to get a FOI bill passed.
The Joint Committee on Constitutional and Legal and Communications conducted meetings around the country last summer, after saying for about eight months they would conduct such hearings. The next step is to prepare a report on the bill.
“They have not been able to do so, and we do not know when this will happen,” one leading FOI advocate told FreedomInfo.org. “We are pushing for it to happen and working with the Chairpersons to convene a meeting to discuss the Report after the regional consultative meetings.”
The bill has not been included in the agenda or timetable for consideration for this session of Parliament. After President Mills on Feb. 16 gave his State of the Nation speech, one member of Parliament spoke on the floor about his disappointments, according to an account in My Joy Online.
The MP for Asokwa, Maxwell Kofi Jumah, said: “What happened to the promise to institute a peer review of the conditions of independent institutions that will guarantee access to justice, human rights, and the right to be empowered with knowledge about civic education? What happened to the passage of the freedom of information act? Where is the code of conduct in government that includes the key information disclosure, ethics and anti corruption measures?”
A description of the situation including comments by a member of the National Media Commission is contained in a Public Agenda article Feb. 20 by Ayuureyisiya Kapini Atafori, who began:
As the calls for the passage of the Freedom of Information Bill are made almost each passing day by majority of Ghanaians, the reluctance of the 230-member Parliament to expedite legislative action on the bill, and the abuse of the power to administer radio frequencies by the National Communications Authority (NCA), has been exposed by a free expression advocate.
Commission member Akoto Ampaw, “told national television viewers that Parliament is not eager to finalize the engineering already done on the bill to enable it become law for reasons he cannot fathom.” The Public Agenda article continued, “While expressing his impression that `the Majority and Minority are not committed to the passing of the bill,’ Mr. Ampaw pointed out that, `it is an issue of democracy and the right of the population as a whole’ and not for the media alone.
George Yiadom-Boakye, the assembly member for Koforidua-Asokore Ahenfie, was also recently quoted as having appeals for passage of a FOI law. “He said the ordinary Ghanaian had the right to question the rationale behind any policy but no law binds the authorities to give them that explanation and so the RTI law was important since it would address all issues of national interest,” according a report on his remarks in Modern Ghana. He spoke as a showing of a movie about the FOI law in South Africa. The Eastern Regional Coalition on the RTI organized the event.
Ghana Web columnist George Berko recently wrote a post asking why a data protection bill was passed, but a FOI bill has not. He said (in part):
I can’t help, even if cynically, wondering if the Parliament was quick to pass this Bill ahead of the FOI Bill only so it can protect its members and other Officials from any Public intrusion to expose their nefarious behaviors. In the same mode, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear some folks regard the Parliament’s passing of the Data Protection Bill as some kind of counter to the repeal of the anti-libel Law and People’s demand for the Freedom of Information (FOI) Bill. If that is not the case, then the Parliament should move immediately to pass the FOI Bill as the opposite side of the same Coin.
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