Warn­ing that democ­ra­cy is now un­der threat, for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj is plan­ning to mount a pub­lic cam­paign to stop the Gov­ern­ment from amend­ing the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act with­out pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at his of­fice in San Fer­nan­do, Ma­haraj said the pro­posed amend­ments were not in the pub­lic in­ter­est and will hin­der peo­ple from ac­cess­ing gov­ern­ment-held in­for­ma­tion.

The press con­fer­ence took place ahead of a planned de­bate on the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Tax, Amnesty, Pen­sions, Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion, Na­tion­al In­sur­ance, Cen­tral Bank and Non-Prof­it Or­gan­i­sa­tions ) Bill 2019 in Par­lia­ment with the aim of amend­ing Sec­tions 15, 21 and 22 of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act.

Say­ing “in­for­ma­tion was the oxy­gen of democ­ra­cy,” Ma­haraj said such amend­ments were dan­ger­ous to democ­ra­cy and will seek to de­ny the pub­lic and the me­dia the right to hold the gov­ern­ment ac­count­able.

Un­der the ex­ist­ing Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act of 1999 Sec­tion 15, the Court can com­pel the gov­ern­ment to re­lease gov­ern­ment records.

“Sec­tion 15 of the Act im­pos­es a 30-day lim­it for the pub­lic au­thor­i­ty to no­ti­fy the ap­pli­cant if a re­quest is de­nied. How­ev­er, un­der the pro­posed amend­ment, Ma­haraj says a per­son will now have to wait six months to find out whether their re­quest for in­for­ma­tion was de­nied or not.”

“If this amend­ment is made law there would be un­rea­son­able de­lays and an un­nec­es­sary lev­el of bu­reau­cra­cy to ob­tain in­for­ma­tion un­der the Act. It would hin­der, frus­trate and ob­struct peo­ple who wish to get gov­ern­ment-held in­for­ma­tion,” Ma­haraj added.

He al­so said an amend­ment to Sec­tion 21 and 22 will give the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al con­trol over the re­lease of in­for­ma­tion, “a pow­er which he should not have.”

“The ef­fect of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al hav­ing the fi­nal say on pro­posed de­ci­sions of a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty to refuse to sup­ply in­for­ma­tion would re­sult in pub­lic au­thor­i­ties au­to­mat­i­cal­ly re­fus­ing re­quests,” Ma­haraj opined.

He al­so said if a per­son’s re­quest is re­fused, any­one can ap­ply to the High Court for ju­di­cial re­view to get in­for­ma­tion but if the Act is amend­ed the de­lays in ac­cess­ing in­for­ma­tion will re­sult in ex­pi­ra­tion of statu­to­ry pe­ri­ods.

Say­ing he was con­vinced that amend­ing the Act which he pi­lot­ed in Par­lia­ment would lead to an “un­ten­able state of af­fairs” Ma­haraj said, “I feel strong­ly about this piece of leg­is­la­tion and I have de­cid­ed that if the gov­ern­ment in­tends to pur­sue this and make it law that I will not on­ly file le­gal pro­ceed­ings in or­der to chal­lenge it but I will al­so mount a pub­lic cam­paign against the gov­ern­ment to show how un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic these amend­ments are.”

“I will put pub­lic pres­sure on the gov­ern­ment to re­peal any Act which it pass­es in re­spect to these amend­ments,” Ma­haraj said.

“I do not want the gov­ern­ment to be­lieve I am threat­en­ing it with any lit­i­ga­tion but what I am say­ing is I will in­form the pub­lic about what is go­ing on be­cause it af­fects the democ­ra­cy of our coun­try. In­for­ma­tion is the oxy­gen of democ­ra­cy. If peo­ple do not have the in­for­ma­tion they can­not con­sid­er their af­fairs prop­er­ly. They can­not as­sess op­po­si­tion or as­sess po­lit­i­cal life. They need the in­for­ma­tion to ad­dress is­sues in the coun­try. “

He called on the gov­ern­ment to hold a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the pro­posed changes and added that the Bill should be sup­port­ed by a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty be­fore it could be passed.