The Parliament of Ghana on July 2 began debating a right to information bill, with one member calling it “a minefield” and a key minister replying that it is essential for the Ghanaian democracy and economy.
Debate on the bill was not completed, according to the official , publication of which lags by several days. The bill was not debated July 3.
Member of parliament Kobina Tahir Hammond, who called the bill a minefield, cautioned: “We must be very, very conscious as a nation, extremely conscious. There can be proper governance without a certain amount of secrecy.”
“You don’t open up the entire gamut of government to the prying eye of the entire public,” he was quoted as saying in a report on Citimonline and in another report on GhanaWeb.
Member of Parliament and Minister for Science and Environment Mahama Ayariga replied, saying it is the time to pass an RTI law.
“I think this country has been cautious enough. It is rather time for us to courageously move forward when it comes to the passage of the Right to Information Bill and that is for two very good reasons,” he said during the debate.
The first reason, he said, is “to pursue good governance which underpins our constitution.” He continued:
We need an open and transparent system. That is not in doubt and I do not think that the pursuit of the establishment of an open and transparent system in any way, endangers the national security of any country. This is because, if one looks at the Bill, one can see clearly that adequate arrangement has been made to protect certain zones of information that should not be freely available to anybody, because they endanger both the governance process and national security those have been adequately catered for.
Mr Speaker, the second reason we need to pass a right to information legislation is because, in our own Constitution, we have made a commitment to rely on the private sector as an engine of growth and as a partner in development. If I am going to be the engine of growth, and the partner of government in development, then I must have adequate information as a market to be able to inform my daily decisions in the market place. That is why, creating an infrastructure that enables researchers, the markets businessmen and corporate entities, to be able to assess information which they can analyse and take decisions in the private sector, is very critical for the accelerated development of any economy.
The parliament’s discussion centers on a report by a committee and amendments from the Attorney General. (See previous FreedomInfo.org report.) No votes were held during the first day, but dissatisfaction was voiced by Hammond about creating an independent information commission.
IMF Plan Seen as Weak on Transparency
A blog post by Omar Ortez, a Senior Policy Advisor on Active Citizenship at Oxfam US, said the International Monetary Fund should push for passage of an RTI law. An IMF program for Ghana was approved this April after months of intense negotiations. Ortez reported on a panel discussion between founding leaders of Ghana’s Civil Society Platform Albert Kan-Dapaah, Executive Director of Financial Transparency and Accountability (FAT) Africa and former Public Accounts Committee Chair at Ghana’s Parliament; Mohammed Amin Adam, Executive Director of the African Center for Energy Policy (ACEP); and Wendell Daal, Senior Economist at the IMF Africa Department. View and listen to the conversation here.
One highlight from the discussion, he recounted, was agreement that “administrative transparency is limited and could be reversed.” He observed further:
Although the IMF program includes provisions that will improve disclosure of budget and expenditure information –which CSOs appreciate and plan to use for monitoring program implementation, these are administrative provisions that could be reversed or abandoned once the 3-year program ends (or even during the program). Transparency can be more strongly institutionalized by passing new legal frameworks such as the Right to Information Act, or the Fiscal Responsibility Act; fast-tracking the approval of these two pieces of legislation –a public promise yet to be delivered by the Government of Ghana, should be incorporated into the intermediate revisions to the IMF program in the next three years.
Promoting RTI Use by Women
The Coalition on the Right to Information Ghana with support from UNESCO will from the month of July begin the implementation of a new project titled; ‘Promoting Women’s’ Right through Access to Information,” according to an article in Peace FM.
“The Project which is aimed at identifying and creating awareness on the gender dimensions of access to information will involve the use of evidence based approach to advance the advocacy for the passage of an effective right to information legislation in Ghana,” the report says.
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