Thursday, August 30, 2007 Freedom of information law highlighted in anti-graft forum By Karlon N. Rama Sun.Star Staff Reporter
PASSING a Freedom of Information Act will only benefit the working press; it will help make bureaucrats honest.
Dr. Prospero de Vera, a government analyst and a professor at the University of the Philippines National College of Public Administration said this in a gathering in Cebu yesterday.
He pointed out how most thriving democracies—those countries were graft cases are almost unheard of—have one.
“One of the obstacles of good government is the reluctance of agencies to give information,” he said, adding that a government that doesn’t want its institution to be transparent “always has a bad reason to do so.”
De Vera was one of the speakers in a good governance forum sponsored by the University of Cebu College of Law.
Governance
The forum, which was also attended by Visayas Ombudsman Director Virginia Santiago and Mactan Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Ephraim Pelaez, discussed the importance of transparency in anti-graft efforts and participatory governance.
Quoting James Madison, the fourth US president, de Vera said a government that is of the people but which denies the people information on governance is “a prologue to farce and tragedy.”
Maintaining that “the heart of democracy is the active participation of its people in government decisions,” de Vera said getting the right information to the public in general is therefore a basic requirement to making the government work effectively.
And, he said, the only way to obtain the necessary information is for the government to be transparent in its workings.
A good way to achieve that, he said, is through a Freedom of Information Act.
He pointed out that Sweden has had an information act since 1788, while Finland enacted one as early as 1917. The United States, whose constitution and government system the Philippines copied, enacted one in 1966, followed by Australia in 1982 and by Canada in 1985.
“In many of these countries, people aren’t even required to explain why,” de Vera said.
Agencies
Even security-sensitive agencies like the US Federal Bureau of Investigation practices transparency. In fact, it takes the subject a step further by publishing “frequently requested information” on its website.
Another American government website, www.gpoaccess.gov, publishes rules, regulations and statutes that the federal government intends to implement so that the public can comment on them.
In the Philippines, no such service exists mainly because no law compels that public information be shared.
Ombudsman Director Santiago, in her lecture during the forum, said the anti-graft office relies heavily on volunteer anti- corruption groups called Corruption Prevention Units or CPUs, to help them in their mandate.
Pelaez, for his part, said they try to do their best but government units often refuse to give copies of otherwise public documents that could betray evidence of a public bidding being rigged or some contractor giving kickbacks.
The Mactan Island Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which Pelaez heads, is a CPU whose mandate is covered via a memorandum of agreement signed by no less than Tanodbayan Merceditas Gutierrez. (KNR)
