ISLAMABAD: Frustrated by the inordinate delay by the government in bringing Right to Information (RTI) legislation before parliament and its efforts to circumvent the earlier-agreed draft, the opposition has decided to move the same bill as a private members’ bill in Senate, PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar told Dawn on Sunday.

Mr Babar said that the draft of the RTI bill had been prepared and approved by a sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Information and Broadcasting in July 2014 after consultations with stakeholders and the endorsement of the draft by both the information ministry and the law division.

The Senate sub-committee consisted of senators Farhatullah Babar, ex-PML-N senator Syed Zafar Ali Shah and Awami National Party’s Daud Achakzai.

For the swift passage of the bill, he said, the committee had offered to adopt it as a government bill. The offer was accepted by then information minister Pervaiz Rashid.

Mr Rashid had also promised to get the cabinet’s approval for the bill “in its next meeting”.

Mr Babar regretted that almost two years had passed, with the prime minister having presided over nearly a dozen cabinet meetings, but the draft RTI law was never placed before it.

At every meeting of the committee since, he said, the minister tried to explain why it could not be taken up and followed that with yet more promises to place it on the agenda of the next cabinet meeting.

“This is all part of the record of committee proceedings. To be fair, I suspect that the information minister has been overruled by more powerful quarters,” he said, adding: “Either Mr Rashid was powerless before those close to the prime minister and did not want him to take blame, or the invisible and powerful establishment did not want it.”

According to Mr Babar, the second explanation is highly plausible because when the committee was working on it, the Ministry of Defence had formally asked it not to proceed without obtaining a no-objection certificate.

The demand was rejected by the committee as “atrocious”, he said.

The government had, in the meantime, finalised another draft of the RTI law on its own, changing the basic premise of the original bill, namely “maximum disclosure, minimum exemptions and the right to appeal before a credible and independent mechanism”.

Mr Babar said that although the government had not yet formally shared its draft with the Senate committee, he had learnt that the government’s RTI law had reversed critical provisions in the bill, adopted unanimously by the Senate information committee some two years back.

“Proponents of RTI, brace yourselves for a hard and long-drawn battle with the forces of status quo who hide from the public and seek to run away with everything behind the facade of morality, glory of Islam, national security and much more,” was Mr Babar’s warning to activists.

The bill will be jointly moved by Mr Babar, Rubina Irfan and Dr Karim Khwaja of the PPP, Kamil Ali Agha of the PML-Q and Daud Achakzai of the ANP and is on the agenda of Senate for Monday.

Aftab Alam, a media lawyer who has worked extensively on RTI, welcomed the move by opposition parties to introduce the much-delayed law as a private members’ bill.

While there are some technical issues with the draft, it is a good document overall, he said. The government’s own bill is nothing but “garbage”, he said.

The RTI bill was designed to repeal the Freedom of Information Ordinance 2002 — the existing right to information law at the federal level.

The proposed law recognises the citizens’ right to know under the Constitution and to have access to information about the activities of the government.

It aims to empower the citizens on account of the right to know, impart access to public records under broad categories with limited exemptions, increase the capacity of citizens to effectively monitor the performance of the government and ensure transparency and accountability.

The bill lays down procedures to be followed in making requests for information from public bodies.

The bill creates offences and prescribes punishments and penalties for functionaries violating any provisions of the law and officials who do not comply with the provisions of the Act.

The bill also provides for the establishment of an “Information Commission” consisting of three members and provides for a mechanism dedicated to hearing information disclosure-related appeals, as opposed to the ombudsman with limited powers.

Published in Dawn November 21st, 2016