Urgent Freedom of Information bill

Little over a year ago, the House of Representatives, to the chagrin of transparent governance advocates, miserably failed to ratify the Freedom of Information bill—a would-be law 14 years in the making—because of the  purported lack of a quorum to put the bill to a vote in the Lower House session hall.

About a month before that, then presidential candidate Benigno Aquino III promised  that the FOI  bill would be a priority if he became President. An FOI law, after all, would concretize his vision to stamp out government corruption by making the records of public transactions accessible to the public, especially the press.

Cebuanos would welcome an FOI law, to read, for  instance, a liquidation of the provincial government’s expenditures for Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia and other officials’ foreign and domestic trips, or of Cebu congressmen’s pork barrel spending (Each congressman has a regular Priority Development Assistance Fund of P70 million annually plus P5 million to P10 million from the Road Users’ tax).

Sadly, the FOI bill languishes in the Lower House about a year after it was refiled by Deputy Speaker Erin Tañada.

The President’s waffling on a promise is frustrating.

Aquino passed up his first chance to certify the FOI bill as urgent during the first Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council meeting last February. Another Ledac meeeting is scheduled later this month but Aquino.s spokesman Edwin Lacierda did not say if the President will certify the bill as urgent.

Lacierda only said a Palace draft of the bill is being discussed with Budget Secretary Florencio Abad.

Doesn’t the bill as refiled by Tañada suffice?

(Rep. Rodolfo W. Antonino of Nueva Ecija, meanwhile,  drafted a “Freedom of Information and Transparency Act of 2011” which would convert the press into mouthpieces of government officials and  muddle what should otherwise be terse and cogent debate on Tañada and company’s FOI bill.)

Why is Malacañang proceeding slowly on a bill conceived as a concrete “never again” to the behind-the-scenes crookedness of the Marcos era? Is there more to the near-threefold increase of the P-Noy’s wealth than the  assets he inherited—as the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism reported—from his mother?

P-Noy should listen to Justice Secretary De Lima, who pointed out that  development  entails “transparency and integrity in the economic and social transactions of government.”

He should listen to Tañada, his Liberal Party ally:

“The absence of a Freedom of Information law for more than two decades since the ratification of the 1987 Constitution, has resulted in wanton violation of the right to information,” Tañada said.

“We need to pass the Freedom of Information Act within the second regular session of Congress. This will require decisive support coming from President Aquino.”

That “decisive support” will be seen if the President certify’s the FOI bill as urgent in the coming Ledac meeting.