No small matter

MOST people would, at least initially, tend to shrug the matter away. Concerns about people’s ability to question the great and the good in government?

People’s ‘right’ to gain access to information about what public entities and departments are doing? Dream on, they’d say.

Let’s start with the right to food, water and a generally decent life; let’s start with some human rights.

Thought about just a little more deeply, though, the fallaciousness of this line of reasoning becomes clear. Why don’t a lot of people have access to food or potable water, for example? In general terms, because of mismanagement, the lack of planning and — here one can hear lots of voices piping up — that scourge of Pakistan, corruption. Most will get this far and start calling
for accountability. Fewer, though, will pause and think about what accountability means.

In the very first instance, someone who does something for which they ought to be held accountable later is a person who does not expect to be found out. In other words, certain knowledge that information can be withheld can allow dishonesty of purpose. Veils of secrecy make shady deals and wheels within wheels, or just plain inefficiency or even laziness, much more likely. The ability to keep information from getting out is the first box to tick on the list of any potential fraudster; the first crutch of those guilty of the dereliction of duty.

‘Knowledge is power’ is just about the oldest aphorism in the book. And a people with access to knowledge about those that rule over their lives and country — knowledge about how that task is accomplished — are very powerful indeed. So it is that access to information has always been at the heart of the tussle between bureaucracies the world over and the people: the latter want it, the former doesn’t want to cough it up because unsavoury secrets may come to light; accountability may occur.

Realising the role that access to information plays in fostering improved and more honest governance, many countries have enacted legislation making public access to certain sorts of information mandatory — the ‘transparency’, in short, that every Pakistani craves.

Technically, Pakistanis too have the right to freely access information. In fact, we were the first South Asian country to come up with a law in this regard, the Freedom of Information Ordinance 1997 which was later fine-tuned by the Musharraf government into the Freedom of Information Ordinance 2002.

However, many have argued that although this did, at least technically, give Pakistanis the legal tool to demand information from governmental bodies, it remains merely that: a technicality. In practice, the legislation is riddled with clauses that allow secrets to remains under wraps.

Its detractors — and there are a great many of them (the few proponents seemingly comprising stakeholders in secrecy in the bureaucracy itself) — say that exemptions and procedures given to governmental departments under the 2002 ordinance
are such that they render it virtually and practically ineffective.

There are other points of criticism as well, such as that it deals with only federal ministries and divisions (although two provinces subsequently passed their own legislation, i.e. the Balochistan Freedom of Information Act 2005 and the Sindh Freedom of Information Act 2006). Other criticisms are that the 2002 ordinance’s implementing mechanisms — means through which reluctant bureaucracies can be prodded into actually producing the information demanded — are such that they invite evasiveness, and that there is no protection for whistleblowers.

The civil bureaucracy wields considerable power anywhere in the world; it is a machine that runs under its own weight and is notoriously averse to letting any information out. Political circles everywhere seek to control it; as permanent secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby smirked during an episode of Yes, Minister, “ministers come and go, but I go on forever”. Transparency, one route to which is the right to information, is important in this regard. Pakistan has not been lacking in those demanding better legislation on people’s right to information, though one could wish there were a few more voices. Amongst them are a number of activists and reformers, some of whom have argued for this cause on these pages.

Amongst politicians, a staunch proponent has been former information and broadcasting minister Sherry Rehman. Last week, she submitted a draft of her Right to Information Bill before the National Assembly, a project she initiated in 2004 with the submission of an initial draft that called for deep-reaching amendments to the 2002 ordinance. Updated versions of the bill were also submitted for review in 2006 and 2008.

The 2011 Right to Information Bill seeks a repeal of the 2002 legislation and tries to close some of the gaps. There are more stringent implementing mechanism clauses, whistleblower-protection clauses and most interestingly, a clause that seeks to bring large private companies within the ambit of the law if and when it is approved.

If the new proposals do become law, they are likely to have at least some positive effect. Sporadic articles published in various newspapers over the years have documented individuals’ (failed) efforts, under the 2002 ordinance, to obtain information from various departments. In most cases, these people cited the loopholes in the legislation itself that allowed bureaucracies to retain their secrets.

On March 29, 2008 — soon after receiving a unanimous vote of confidence in parliament, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani set out his administration’s 100-day priorities.

Amongst those that remain unfulfilled well past the 100-day deadline is a new freedom of information law. And the 18th Amendment inserted Article 19(A) into the constitution, which explicitly recognises that every citizen shall have the right to have access to information in all matters of public importance (subject to regulation and reasonable restrictions imposed by law).

It’s about time these promises were fulfilled.