It’s taken a while, but the Selangor Freedom of Information Enactment will finally be tabled for its first reading at the upcoming State Legislative Assembly sitting! It will be interesting to see how the Federal Government reacts to this, although they should not be too concerned since only state-related documents will be of relevance here.
BFM Radio interviewed me earlier in the week. The podcast is available here. I spoke about our plans to table the enactment, as well as what the draft roughly contains.
One of the issues was whether or not the Official Secrets Act would interfere with our enactment. The answer (broadly speaking, since there are many technical details that one could write on) is no: Only state-agencies’ information will be made transparently available to the public. Federal agencies’ documents, classified by the Federal Government, are not relevant in this case. However, the Selangor Menteri Besar has the authority under Section 2A of the OSA to declassify certain documents, the power of which he has already exercised numerous times over the past two years (on issues like Bukit Botak etc.).
This is not the final draft yet and there will be several stages to go, like a Select Committee to be formed, public opinion gathered based on the existing document, and then second reading after taking those recommendations and suggestions into account.
Tricia Yeoh maintains a blog at http://egalitaria.wordpress.com/
The Micah Mandate is a Christian-based public interest advocacy ministry that seeks a transformation of our nation through justice, mercy and humility.
July 18th, 2010 at 10:02 pm
I think the draft must be tight so as not open to abuse by little Napoleon. Tight down to the operation procedure or else it will be useless piece of act. What is the definition of state agency? Some council form by the head of a country(HOC) is not consider as an agency. It is consider as a aide group for the HOC. In certain court case, this happen. So make sure all money spend to pay this people or any body form no matter it is in any form of group,agency,official or what ever is accountable to the act.As long as money from the people. Head of state can create different body to hold information.
How do u hold the info officer accountable in the info release? An act must be form to cover this too. If info is release late, what is the action? How do u classify urgent case for speedy release of info? How do you guarantee the information release is full or partial. How i know the info i request is fully release to me. that guy might release partial info to me, deleting certain paragraph or chapter. All this happen in US. Hope u take account. If his can happen in develop country with advance democracy, what with other shame democracy?
How do u prevent abuse of the act? any one requesting info other than must pay fee, must also make sure they provide adequate reasoning why they want to use the info. Not only that, they must also show they have the ability to do good with the info. But fee should not be a barrier for the general public or poor to get info. So u must create category such as journalist, commercial interest , individual use, NGO..etc. must state a rules that the request person are willing to pay how much for the info in the 1st place. The reason is. if this is not stated, if the little napoleon simply print 10 volume of books and the requester cant pay it, the info will be withheld. So info release will be delay. If i can think of this idea to limit the info to be release, i can see the ppl opposite up there cant use this way and many more to denied info request.