A top Malayasian minister has questioned whether the country is ready for a freedom of information law.
“I mean, why should I be giving you data if you are just going to smear it in my face? If you want to have all open data, you must be more responsible,” said by Datuk Paul Low, the minister for governance and integrity in the Prime Minister’s Department, according to a news report by Joseph Sipalan in The Malay Mail and Patrick Lee in The Nation.
The remarks drew objections from an official in one of the two Malaysian states that have FOI laws.
Low said Aug. 18 that a FOI Act will not benefit Malaysia until the government can manage its information better and society is more responsible.
“The FOI Act is the ideal, but when you establish an FOI Act the first thing you have got to know is that the FOI Act is not free. Everything needs a boundary,” he said on the sidelines of a seminar in Kuala Lampur. “You need infrastructure. You may need 300 people to deal with so much information. So it’s not just an Act alone, you need information officers… at the moment, it’s not feasible,” he added.
Low said, “When data is given to society, you must use it responsibly, in a way that is constructive. Don’t simply condemn,” according to the media report.
Only the state governments of Selangor and Penang have FOI laws and Selangor Speaker Hannah Yeoh rebutted Low’s remarks. She said: “It takes political will to enact the FOI legislation. Without it, you will get precisely what Low is talking about – excuses,” Her statement was quoted in an article in The Malay Insider and in The Malay Mail.
“I offer a correction to the honourable minister’s statement that what we need is not a change of culture in government, but a change of government itself,” Yeoh said. “Selangor and Penang have shown the way to freedom of information. We are ready to show Low and this new cabinet of Datuk Seri Najib Razak, how we can do the same for Putrajaya,”
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