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Ramesh: Democracy under attack with FOIA amendments

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#meta[ag-author]
Radhica De Silva
20190610204225
20190610
Former Attorney General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj addresses members of the media during the press conference at his office in San Fernando, yesterday.

Former Attorney General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj addresses members of the media during the press conference at his office in San Fernando, yesterday.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

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.


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