REFERENCE your editorial ‘Culture of opacity’ (March 17). It is stated: “The active history of right to information laws in Pakistan starts from 2002, when we became the first country in South Asia to pass an ordinance in this context...”.

This is incorrect. The first Freedom of Information (FOI) Ordinance in Pakistan’s history was promulgated on Jan 14, 1997, by the caretaker government appointed by President Farooq Leghari on Nov 6, 1996, and headed by prime minister Malik Meraj Khalid. The under-signed had the privilege of being a member of the four- member cabinet committee which prepared the draft of the ordinance. The other members of the committee were Shahid Hamid as Chair, Shafqat Mehmood and Najam Sethi. Ten years earlier, in 1987, Senator Prof Khurshid Ahmed of the Jamaat-i-Islami had moved a private member’s bill in the senate for a freedom of information law which I actively supported as an independent senator .

However, neither the government of then prime minister Junejo nor the second government of prime minister Nawaz Sharif, which took office on Feb 17, 1997, enabled either the passage of the bill , nor , in 1997 , was the ordinance converted into an act of parliament by the four-month deadline when ordinances lapse.

It was during the first year of the tenure of Gen Pervez Musharraf’’s government that the freedom of information law was circulated for public opinion in 2000. The under-signed in the capacity of the information minister conducted a series of consultations with civil society and the media in 2000 to finalise the draft law which was eventually belatedly promulgated in 2002 after my resignation from the cabinet in October 2000.

Any first law can, in retrospect, be termed “weak and ineffective” as the editorial wrongly asserts. Almost all laws evolve and are improved with time and experience. The FOI Ordinances of 1997 and 2002 opened new directions to improve access to officially-controlled information and stimulated new levels of inquiry by civil society.

Senator (r) Javed Jabbar

Karachi

Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2017