The Nation: Pakistan: Thursday,
March 16, 2017.
The Senate
Committee on the Right to Information (RTI) Bill 2016 has decided to drop one
of the fundamental clauses of the Right to Information Bill; the whistleblower
clause.
One of the
more important functions of the new law, the whistleblower aspect of the new
legislation was to allow for employees of government and security institutions
to speak up and point out suspected graft or corruption with complete
anonymity.
The stated
reason for keeping the whistleblower clause out, as pointed out by the Minister
of State for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb, is that there is
already a clause for wilful destruction of records in the Pakistan Penal Code.
Additionally,
she voiced the fear that this clause could be exploited by government officials
with vendettas, or for personal gains considering there are no punishments for
false accusations.
However,
where common sense would dictate that the government counteract this by putting
in a punishment for false accusations, it decided to scrap this facet of the
law altogether.
And even if
we admit to the fact there is a chance that the whistleblower clause might be
exploited, surely the threat of mass corruption, which already seemingly exists
in government institutions, is much greater than a few faulty accusations here
or there.
If those
innocent were found to be accused, it’s not like they would have been strung up
without any evidence.
History tells
us that even cold hard evidence of corruption is sometimes not enough to get
anything more than a plea bargain.
Massive
corruption by Balochistan’s Finance Secretary and more recently, by Hyderabad’s
Additional District Accounts Officer, made them both billionaires.
This is
clearly years of corruption, hard at work.
Can cases
like this be uncovered from the outside? Yes, but clearly the time taken to
unearth these scandals could have been avoided if a whistleblower had spoken
up.
This goes
against what the new law was supposed to achieve; greater accountability.
Merely allowing for the public to have access
to records and information regarding government institutions is not nearly
enough.
Only the
employees of these organisations have a complete picture of their inner
workings.
Concerned
citizens will still be acting on second-hand information where a whistleblower
on the inside might have witnessed things themselves or have more irrefutable
evidence than the institution would be willing to provide an individual
demanding records.
The
government’s reason for this omission is a hasty attempt to justify
short-changing the people and allowing for corrupt institutions to not only
survive, but thrive because there is still no real check on the officials that
care more about personal gain than the common good.
The state must reconsider.
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