Editorial
Give citizens RTI now
View(s):Over the years, politicians have uniformly driven Sri Lankans to the polls without first guaranteeing their right to information. This glaring and unacceptable anomaly has meant that generations of citizens have cast their vote at successive elections on the basis of pledges and promises, with only passing knowledge about how their country is run.
The two positions are fundamentally incompatible. People who are deliberately deprived of information about how their government spends their taxes, conducts business, parcels out contracts, takes loans, does procurements, effects key public sector appointments or runs institutions cannot rightly be described as making an “informed” choice at an election. Yet, this continues to happen.
The media must be able to educate voters about policy decisions, the rationale for them, their implementation and their impact on lives. In Sri Lanka, today, journalists have no legal entitlement to demand such information. Neither does the citizen. The Constitution provides for freedom of speech and expression, including publication, but other laws have severely limited the exercise of these rights.
These include the Official Secrets Act, the Press Council Act and even the Prevention of Terrorism Act which has a section on prohibition of publications. The Establishments Code for civil servants precludes officials from divulging information even in cases of pressing public interest. This week, a fresh attempt was made to change the status quo. Eight media organisations wrote to the two main presidential candidates, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena, asking them to include, among other things, a pledge to enact the Right to Information (RTI) Act in their manifestos.
The associations represent print media publishers, editors of national newspapers, media and freedom of expression activists, working journalists and media workers’ trade unions. Agitation for the enactment of an RTI Act has been going on for over a decade now and several drafts have been proposed, all to no avail.
Sri Lanka is today the only country in South Asia without an RTI Act and this is a sorry indictment on successive governments. Even in Afghanistan, amidst all that instability and violence, the Wolesi Jirga or Lower House of Parliament approved an Access to Information Law in July this year.
Activists are campaigning for its speedy passage through the Mesherano Jirga or Upper House. In February 2014, the National Assembly of Bhutan passed an RTI Bill, placing it in line to become the world’s hundredth country with such a law. It now goes to the National Council or Upper House for approval. In Sri Lanka, which proudly proclaims that it is the region’s oldest democracy-the RTI Act has gone nowhere.
Media groups here made a similar appeal of the two main presidential candidates at the 2010 election, Mahinda Rajapaksa and Sarath Fonseka. The latter promised in his manifesto to present Cabinet papers within a month of his winning, seeking approval for a bill to abolish the Press Council and to present a Freedom of Information Bill. Given the record of past leaders, there was no guarantee this would have been implemented-but at least lip service was paid.
Mr Rajapaksa did not go as far. His 2005 manifesto, the Mahinda Chinthana, did explicitly recognise the “right of the people to have access to correct information” but said more about a media Code of Ethics than about such a right. It promised various benefits to the media, including duty free computers and motorcycles and scholarships. There was no further mention of access to information, “correct” or otherwise; to the media or otherwise; to the citizen or otherwise.
Interestingly, that first manifesto also had this to say: “State media will be made to be the highest example in the use of an independent and responsible media and towards this, the state media will be de-politicised.” It is plain to see where that ended up. President Rajapaksa’s 2010 manifesto focused on modernising the media. It also said that, “although some criticism has been levelled against the government, regulations controlling the media had never been issued, as has been the case with previous governments”. It ignored the fact that the defunct Sri Lanka Press Council, with statutory powers to send journalists and publishers alike to jail, was reactivated without announcement on June 1, 2009.
This manifesto, the Mahinda Chinthana Idiri Dekma, introduced President Rajapaksa’s belief that “the media should act for the country’s benefit, development, nationality and social ethics, rather than for purely political purposes”. It then spoke of a “mechanism” that would give “priority to produce accurate information and portray a true picture of the country to the rest of the world and thereby uplift the reputation of the country, instead of the current practice of certain media institutions which strive to tarnish the image of the country by portraying Sri Lanka as a state (sic) with an unsatisfactory track record”.
This defensive and unproductive pledge was political in its very essence. While such a mechanism has not yet been introduced, the phrasing of the clause paints the picture of a regime with an entrenched interest in controlling information and of manipulating media output. What, for instance, is “a true picture of the country”? When governments seek to prescribe the news, it is called propaganda-not information.
What Sri Lanka needs is more transparency and accountability, not less. More access to information, not less. More documents, statistics and disclosure, not less. Journalists and citizens must be empowered to demand and receive accurate information in the public interest. For instance, they must be able to ask how much money is being spent on respective election campaigns, in what form and from where it comes. What logical reason could there be for suppressing this — except to hide things?
Even within the public sector, fewer and fewer people are allowed to know what is going on. Our Business section today says there are rumblings within the Finance Ministry on this score. Fear pervades even in the private sector, with business leaders cowering away from expressing opinions unless on condition of anonymity. This is a travesty of good governance and democracy.
The RTI Act must be introduced, regardless of who wins. Information is not a favour. It is the people’s entitlement. Enough of this ‘guided democracy’.