The Coalition on Right to Information May 22 countered allegations that it is delaying progress on right to information legislation.
Nana Oye Lithur, speaking for the Coalition on RTI, said at a press conference in Accra that the coalition has engaged in many efforts to educate the public and members of parliament and to assist legislative drafters.
She spoke in reaction to comments made by the Majority Leader in Parliament, Cletus Avoka, on May 16. (See previous FreedomInfo.org report.) Avoka, while defending allegations that he was not making the bill a priority, said the Coalition had not provided detailed comments on the bill.
The Coalition has for several years criticized the draft bill as too weak, while also pushing for passage. It submitted a more detailed analysis on May 21. The Options Paper was supported by the World Bank.
The parliamentary committee handling the bill has yet to prepare a promised summary of nationwide consultations held last summer. Recently parliamentary leaders sought World Bank funding for a fact-finding trip to London, which has not been approved.
At the Coaliton press conference, Oye said, “Since the process begun in 2003, the Coalition has supported it at the Attorney General‘s Department and when it was submitted to Cabinet for consideration and adoption and subsequently to Parliament. It has also supported the processes at the Joint Committee on Communication and Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs level.”
She said the Coalition submitted a detailed memorandum on the Bill to Parliament in April 2010, and followed this with the distribution of 230 copies of the Coalition’s publication containing a clause by clause commentary on the RTI Bill to all Members of Parliament in April 2010, according to an article about her remarks by Ghana News Agency which goes into additional detail.
“Apart from resource materials on RTI, the Coalition has had several engagements with Parliament since the Bill was laid in March 2010. The Coalition held a workshop with 32 members of the Joint Committee on Communication and Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs on the Bill on June 9, 2010 at the Kofi Annan Centre. There also have been breakfast and roundtable discussions with parliamentary committees and many one-on-one engagements meetings, she said.
“Subsequently, the Coalition has prepared and forwarded an expert opinion on the Bill to the World Bank on May 7, 2012. Copies of the expert opinion with the World Bank’s authorisation were forwarded to Parliament on May 21, 2012, and made available to the Majority and Minority leaders, and members of the Joint Committee,” Oye said.
“While we are committed to seeing the passage of the Bill without any further delay, we are not simply interested in passing any Bill into law. Equally important for us is the need to pass into law, a bill that meets international standards and best practices, and enhances transparency, accountability and open government,” she added.
The bill’s exemptions, long timelines for disclosure, fee regime, and appeals mechanism have been criticized by proponents.
Other Criticisms Voiced
The Ghana Aid Effectiveness Forum a civil society advocacy group has also objected to the parliamentary delay, according to another media account.
“The RTI Bill is about making basic information on government activities available to citizens. Holding government accountable is impossible without access to information, and the capacity to ask relevant questions,” according to the group’s statement.
“Currently, inadequate access to information on government activities prohibits effective citizen-government dialogue on policies and programmes,” GAEF stated.
The bill’s weaknesses are spelled out in an article in Modern Ghana, headlined “Toothless Bulldog,” by Emmanuel Kwame Mensah. He said, “It is useless to pass a bill that instead of facilitating maximum disclosure of informaton stifles the people’s right to demand accountability from govrnments.”
The delay in passage is summarized in a long News Time Africa article by Francis l Sackitey. He wrote in part:
Civil and human right organizations are on the neck of the Atta Mills administration; piling pressure on him to hasten the process of passing the Freedom of Information Bill which has been in parliament since 2009. Having made the Freedom of Information matter a campaign issues in the 2008 presidential election to the extent of stating it in their manifesto, and the many assurances that the Vice president John Mahama gave after they won the election, Ghanaians are beginning to see the delay as one of government’s failure to fulfill its many campaign promises.
Filed under: What's New