The Daily Star: Bangladesh: Saturday, July 15, 2017.
The freedom
of a nation cannot be upheld by laws alone, but also by the light of the nation
and knowledge of their use.” These words by Anders Chydenius, a Swedish
enlightenment thinker and politician of the eighteenth century, had set the
ball rolling for the adoption of world's first freedom of information law in
Sweden and Finland in 1766. Since then around 115 countries/territories have
enacted similar transparency laws.
The
Bangladesh Right to Information Act (RTI) 2009 was inspired by the same
objective of empowering citizens with the right to know how the government
exercises its authority under the laws of the land. On July 1, 2017, it
completed eight years since it became operational with the establishment of the
Information Commission of Bangladesh.
The
anniversary provides a good occasion to assess how the law itself and the
Information Commission have fared over the years. The exercise is equally
important in relation to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals
(SDG) 2030, of which RTI is an integral part. To obtain a good rating when
Bangladesh's RTI use is measured against international standards, we must
identify the shortfalls and mend them quickly.
We can base
our assessment on the Information Commission's Annual Report 2016, combined
with the perspectives of individual users of the law, activists engaged in its
promotion and media reports and emerging literature on the subject.
The speech
delivered by the Honourable President of the country on “International Right to
Information Day” last year indicates support to the RTI Act from the highest
level of government: “Having or not having the right information is like living
under light or darkness. Just as light shows the path to human wellbeing and
progress, right information helps citizens to claim their legitimate rights and
dispel corruption and unfair practices from society. Contrarily, darkness
promotes misfortune and spreads corruption.”
Is the
Information Commission living up to the claims of the government and the
expectations of the people?
The Annual
Report shows that in 2016, some 6,369 requests for information were made to
public authorities. Of these, over 95 percent were provided with the
information sought.
539
complaints were lodged with the Information Commission by disgruntled
information seekers. Of these, 364 were accepted for hearing. The rest were
either rejected for faulty submissions or decided without a hearing.
From 2010,
the first year of the law, the number of requests for information declined from
25,401 to 6,181 in 2015. Altogether, some 82,412 RTI applications were recorded
in eight years. One may ask if this is a respectable figure for a country of
over 160 million people.
A quick
comparison with our two giant neighbours, India and China, may help. In
2015-16, some 1.2 million RTI requests were entertained by public authorities
under the central government of India alone, of which 94 percent received
positive responses. During the same period 106,556 appeals and complaints were resolved
by the Central Information Commission (CIC). The numbers would be much higher
for the entire country if State figures were added.
For China,
the available figure was 1.5 million for the year 2011. Of these 85 percent
resulted in disclosure. Who would have thought that a transparency law would
work under a totalitarian system?
Lest readers
attribute the large numbers to population sizes, the following figures from
countries with lesser populations than Bangladesh may help. The UK FOI requests
in 2016 numbered 45,415. The figure for Australia for 2015-16 is 37,996. It
shows that population size does not determine use.
It would be
simplistic to claim that the Bangladesh Act is failing. A transparency regime,
by nature, makes slow progress. It takes a long time to break away from a
deep-rooted culture of official secrecy and change people's mindset forged over
centuries.
A more
constructive position would be to check if we are going in the right direction
and if corrective measures may change the situation. Some positive indications
are available from the Annual Report, including the following:
The list of
issues on which RTI requests were made in 2016 show a growing maturity of
users. Many more requests now relate to public interest and
transparency/accountability issues, and not simply to personal needs.
The
overwhelming use of the law by marginalised communities is slowly giving way to
more users from the middle and educated classes. More requests are now made to
Central Ministries and authorities, departing from the earlier focus on local
bodies.
The emergence
of a breed of passionate RTI users, named in the Annual Report, is another
notable development.
The
Designated Officials (DOs) appear to be less likely to get away by falsely
claiming at complaint hearings that the RTI requests never reached them.
The
Information Commission is slowly moving towards making greater use of penalties
on defaulting DOs. Seven DOs were fined in 2016 alone, which is more than 50
percent of the total of 12 imposed till then.
Written
decisions by the Information Commission on complaint hearings are in many cases
better reasoned and articulated. It indicates evolution of a good
jurisprudence.
Let us also
pay heed to less encouraging trends so that we may address them.
The practice
of rejecting complaints on procedural grounds continues to be a key factor
impacting negatively on prospective applicants. The Annual Report shows that 70
out of 175 complaints (40 percent), rejected by the Information Commission was
because applications/appeals were not addressed to the right persons.
The
non-appointment of DOs, or their non-replacement upon transfer, is linked to
the above factor. So far around 24,103 DOs have been appointed against a
possible figure of 39,000 for the whole country. Where would applicants go when
no DOs are appointed or the authorities disregard the directives of the Information
Commission to appoint them?
The time
taken by the Information Commission to resolve complaints sometimes exceed the
legal limit of 75 days by many times. It is known to postpone or reschedule
hearings frequently at the urging of powerful authorities. This causes much
frustrations, lengthy delays, increased expenses and undue suffering to
ordinary complainants.
The practice
of resorting to one-party hearing by the Information Commission to resolve
complaints disappoints users who find it contrary to basic principles of
justice.
A growing
practice of the Information Commission to declare a complaint to be “sub
judice”, if a writ petition on a similar claim remains pending in the High
Court, is another source of frustration. Many complaints are kept hanging on
this ground though clear precedents exist.
We hope that
this analysis of the implementation of RTI in the country would help all
concerned—the government, the Information Commission and citizens—to appreciate
that the potential of the law can only be achieved through their combined
efforts. While there are reasons to worry about the low use of the law, there
are also some gleams of hope.
The
government must provide the necessary moral and ancillary support to help the
Information Commission undertake the required corrective measures. It should
ensure inclusion of legal expertise in future composition of the Commission. On
its part, the Commission must strive to win back citizen's trust by earnestly
removing all impediments in the use of the law and setting examples of its own
transparency and accountability. This should enhance growth.
Let us keep
in mind that “there is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick,
there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.”
(Joseph Pulitzer). Together, we can pierce the veil of secrecy from the work of
public offices. It would strengthen our democracy and promote good governance.
(Shamsul Bari
and Ruhi Naz are Chairman and Project Coordinator (RTI section) respectively of
Research Initiatives, Bangladesh (RIB). E-mail: rib@citech-bd.com)
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