Cav­ing in to pub­lic pres­sure, the Gov­ern­ment on Mon­day night pro­posed changes to its con­tro­ver­sial bill con­cern­ing the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, who laid the new amend­ments in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day night, con­firmed at a brief­ing yes­ter­day the changes were made af­ter Gov­ern­ment not­ed the pub­lic re­ac­tion to clause sev­en of the FOI Act.

“Per­haps I un­der­es­ti­mat­ed the re­ac­tion to a mat­ter which Gov­ern­ment felt was a sim­ple one, there­fore we press ‘pause’,” Al-Rawi said.

“It’s clear what Gov­ern­ment felt was a sim­ple plan isn’t as sim­ple as what Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed it to be,” he said, adding he may have mis­un­der­stood the ef­fect of the sit­u­a­tion.

His shift prompt­ed the Op­po­si­tion to ac­cuse Al-Rawi of pre­sent­ing flawed leg­is­la­tion to Par­lia­ment.

The new amend­ments were cir­cu­lat­ed to MPs at the end of Par­lia­ment’s sit­ting on Mon­day night.

The orig­i­nal bill, pre­sent­ed to Par­lia­ment last Fri­day, in­volved a pack­age of amend­ments head­ed by law for the up­com­ing Tax Amnesty. It al­so seeks to amend the law on Pen­sions, Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion, Na­tion­al In­sur­ance, Cen­tral Bank and Non-Prof­it Or­gan­i­sa­tion Acts.

Re­gard­ing the FOIA as­pect, the orig­i­nal bill had sought to ex­tend from 30 days to 90 days the length of time which Gov­ern­ment bod­ies would have to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on pub­lic re­quests filed un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act. The pro­pos­al al­so ex­pand­ed the time­frame to 180 days where the State en­ti­ty in­tends to de­ny the in­for­ma­tion be­ing re­quest­ed. That time­frame was to ob­tain the AG’s ap­proval on the re­quest for in­for­ma­tion.

Oth­er claus­es in the Mis­cel­la­neous bill pro­posed an en­hanced pen­sion pack­age for the prime min­is­ter, pres­i­dent and judges.

When it was pre­sent­ed last Fri­day, Al-Rawi said the bill would be de­bat­ed on Mon­day. The Op­po­si­tion ob­ject­ed to such swift de­bate on the ba­sis the par­ty would not have had time to re­search.

How­ev­er, a wave of out­cry— es­pe­cial­ly on the FOIA clause —en­sued from over 30 groups in­clud­ing non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, busi­ness cham­bers, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion, NATUC and oth­ers. Some re­tired To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly­men even ex­pressed con­cern they couldn’t ac­cess the en­hanced pen­sion. Gov­ern­ment was urged to with­draw the FOIA clause and have con­sul­ta­tions on it.

But on Tues­day while Al-Rawi said Gov­ern­ment had not­ed con­cerns on the length of the pro­posed 90 days FOIA time­frame, he said there wouldn’t be con­sul­ta­tions. “What for? We feel the da­ta will speak for it­self,” he said.

He, how­ev­er, added Gov­ern­ment has heed­ed ar­gu­ments on the FOI is­sue and halved the ini­tial­ly pro­posed 90-day time frame to 45 days.

The change pro­pos­es that “a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty shall take rea­son­able steps to en­able an ap­pli­cant to be no­ti­fied of the ap­proval or re­fusal of his re­quest as soon as prac­ti­ca­ble but in any case not lat­er than thir­ty days af­ter the day on which the re­quest is du­ly made. It al­so pro­vides a two-week ex­ten­sion of time to en­sure that pub­lic au­thor­i­ties have suf­fi­cient time with­in which to en­sure com­pli­ance with the FOI re­quest es­pe­cial­ly in cas­es where the re­quest may be vo­lu­mi­nous/broad.”

The clause re­tains the AG to re­view the pub­lic au­thor­i­ty’s de­ci­sion with­in 30 days and ad­vise the au­thor­i­ty whether the ap­pli­cant is en­ti­tled to ac­cess a re­quest­ed doc­u­ment. Mem­bers of the pub­lic will still have re­course to ju­di­cial re­view if they wish.

Al-Rawi al­so de­fend­ed the pro­posed en­hanced pen­sion pack­ages to judges. He said 20,00 peo­ple weren’t in­volved and the Gov­ern­ment needs to at­tract peo­ple to the Ju­di­cia­ry. He said some re­tirees were liv­ing al­most in­di­gent­ly and even some UNC “peo­ple” had come to his of­fice “at death and de­struc­tion’s door.” Ac­knowl­edg­ing pen­sions for politi­cians was a thorny is­sue, he added pen­sions would be re­set every five years.

The new amend­ments—which on­ly re­quire Gov­ern­ment votes for pas­sage—will be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment Fri­day.