“Despite being one of the first pieces of legislation that President Ortega signed into law in 2007, journalists and other organizations agree that the Law of Access to Public Information (LAIP by its initials in Spanish) does not work: the agencies do not release the information and no institution forces them to do so,” according to an article (also in Spanish) by Silvia Higuera in the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas blog.
The comprehensive article takes a broad look at the lack of transparency in Nicaragua, also pointing out the lack of interviews by public officials and the high level of media concentration.
“There is a systematic blocking of access to public information to the detriment of the independent press,” Carlos Fernando Chamorro, director of the investigative magazine Confidencial, is quoted as saying.
“It is a extreme system of control of public information that is complemented by the uselessness of the law of access to public information,” Chamorro said.
He continued:
The law is now nine years old, yet to this day no public official has been sanctioned for violating it. There is no response to the journalists who present requests based on the law. Some entities such as the National Assembly or some municipalities respond to the request when it concerns information that is not very important, but the executive is the main offender of the law of access to information.
Guillermo Rothschuch Villanueva, director of the National Media Observatory and the Communication Research Center (CINCO by its initials in Spanish), said approval of the law “has not meant anything,” according to the article.
Higuera wrote:
According to the report “Central America threatened,” this is because after signing the LAIP into law, the government’s “secrecy in the management of public information…became the norm.” It got to the point when public officials who gave statements to independent media were dismissed from their positions.
(This refers to “Between censorship and discrimination: Central America threatened” from the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters, Fundación Comunicándonos of El Salvador and Semanario Voces.)
The report added that some entities continue setting up hurdles when releasing public information through different excuses such as stating that the person responsible for this is not present, asking how the information will be used, or classifying the information as confidential or classified.
Although the law also stipulates that some information will be available through the websites of public entities, some of them do not have it or have incomplete or out-of-date information, according to the report.
One example that Rothschuch gives is that, ironically, it was much easier to find out who the owners of media outlets were before the approval of the LAIP.
“There is a great lack of transparency. In 2006, one could easily obtain information about telecommunications in Nicaragua, who was the owner, where and with who they operated,” Rothschuch said. “But since 2007 and 2008 this disappeared. Now, even students have a hard time accessing information for their school projects.”
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