By Umaru Fofana
In Parliament it lies. Covered in dust. Forgotten by the legislature. Suffocated by the executive. Besmirched by the judiciary. Unchallenged by the opposition. They all seem complicit. With all sides prevaricating no one is advocating. Our Freedom of Information Bill is all but killed.
Yesterday the government was defensive. The day before the people were restive. Today parliament seems ineffective. Tomorrow the courts will remain inactive. Again, the government will get defensive. And the people must, again, get restive.
From promises galore, to inaction adored. Wrinkles on a young lady’s face can leave even an old man spitting. Even for the most sanguine, hopes are holding in hoes – ready to be buried in the earth. A failed journey to the land of what looked so promising. The promises have not been delivered. True to the adage, a hen that keeps jumping over fire while her chicks are following her risks parting with them.
Our politicians – especially those in Government – have failed us. The right of the people to know is the most fundamental and most important any government can give to them. Failing to do so renders every other thing wishy-washy and pretentious at best.
Words have been wasted. Time and energy wasted on them. Resources dished out with nothing to show. Some eaten by the very Parliamentarians who have now failed to deliver a Freedom of Information Law.
In parliament they sat. Fidgeting bills like toys. Looking around with nothing to do. Sorry …they did do some things. They were recalled on New Year’s Day to salute and honour a North African dictator – Muammar Ghadaffi. They even made him one of them – Honorary MP, in complete disregard for those who voted them in. On yes…they also reconvened hurriedly from recess to pass a mining lease agreement that was as anti-people as their behaviour portended. But no time to pass the FOI Bill.
They spent hours either foolishly praising some boring speeches or stupidly criticising some pro-people initiative if only to appease their parochial political interest. But no time for an FOI Bill, which their people said, they needed and wanted. People they are supposed to represent anyway.
Soon they are not sure who is coming. Soon they will turn round to change batteries in the toy and a metaphorical stray bullet will hit and kill them. Someone else will pick up the toy. No seat for them in parliament after November.
Not once, not twice, President Ernest Bai Koroma has told us that an FOI Law is a must – and his priority – before the November elections. His Minister of Information and, formerly, a staunch proponent of an FOI Bill has trumpeted that even more. Now we have been told that with the passage of the current session of the House the passing of the bill from where it sits is nil. We must start all over again. Going back full throttle. How wasteful! How insensitive! How cavalier!
It was on 3 May 2011 when journalists protested to the Speaker of Parliament, Justice Abel Stronge. And in front of Parliament Building I personally hand-delivered to him a copy of our protest letter over the stalling of the passage of the bill. He assured they would do just that when they reconvened in the next two weeks. We still wait for those two weeks.
I hear the Speaker told a gathering of FOI activists recently in Freetown that they needed to lobby Parliament before they could pass the bill into law. Lobby who? Lobby with what? The only lobbying, as far as I know, that campaigners for an FOI Law have not done is to bribe parliament, which they must never do.
Anyway … a few moments after submitting the letter to the Speaker last year, we marched down to State House. Again I hand-delivered to President Koroma, in the presence of dozens of journalists, a petition over the retention of the criminal and seditious libel law and told him about our concerns over the stalling of the FOI bill by parliament. Not for the first or second or even third time, the president assured he would action them both. One year on, nothing done.
In all of these prevarications, we see perhaps the clearest indication of how power intoxicates people. And by the time they wake up to it, you know what happens. An FOI law is good for progressive elements in government or other public offices in as much the same way it is good for the masses. It is only bad for thieves and others in public offices who are involved in some other shenanigans.
Some in authority have bandied about this notion that an FOI Law must heed national creed – perhaps they mean national GREED. The bill in its current form – or as we knew it to be when it was tabled – has exemption clauses which are even over the top in that they exempt too many things, which, in my view, must not be exempted. These exemption clauses address national security and privacy issues. Any justification for its stalling attributed to those issues serves only as a fig leaf and is fickle.
This is why I am amazed and even bemused at the attempt by government to recently launch an online repository on the mining and extractive sector and the transparency portal which the government argued were ways to show it was committed to open itself to scrutiny and full disclosure. Nothing could be further from the truth. That was just showmanship in futility. Nothing replaces a Freedom of Information Law. In fact in countries who mean business, such as Kenya, it is enshrined in their constitution. And in Liberia it is contained in the Act that no laws passed in the future can negate any of the fundamentals of the existing FOI Law.
Worried as I am at the fact the attempt to have the law has been botched by an apparent combination of executive unwillingness and legislative pliability, even more concerning is the possibility that a law may be passed with only a semblance of what it should be. It will either be watered down beyond essence or thrown out completely.
We demand, Mr President and Mr Information Minister, that a Freedom of Information Law be passed in less than two months. This is something the people have stated clearly in consultations organised by the ministry of information of all – a government organ. What else anyone needs as proof that our Parliament MUST promulgate this bill! Why waste money on nationwide consultations of decisions arrived at do not mean anything! Or may be someone is playing cricket with the bill – and still bowling it – so it is bowled out of parliament. But they it is that will be bowled out.
