Tañada optimistic of FOI passage

CEBU, Philippines – One of the authors of the "Freedom of Information Bill" remains optimistic that the proposed measure will be passed into law during the 15th Congress.

Deputy House Speaker Lorenzo Tañada III said that there are six bills that were filed in relation to the same subject matter and these bills will be reconciled and hopefully the House of Representatives will come up with one version.

Tañada said that House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte supports the passage of the bill.

President Aquino is likewise supportive of the bill when he was still a senator.

"The prospect that this bill will be passed is high," said Tañada during a press conference in Cebu yesterday.

Tañada was speaker of the forum organized by the University of San Carlos-Student Alliance for Nationalism and Democracy Foundation Inc.

The Senate during the 14th Congress ratified the Freedom of Information bill that promotes transparency and accountability in government by strengthening the people's right to access information.

However, House of Representatives failed to ratify their version of the bill until it adjourned for the May 10 elections.

Earlier, Senator Peter Allan Cayetano, chair of the Senate Committee on Public Information and Mass Media, and the lead proponent and sponsor of the FOI in the Senate, said that Aquino's support for the bill could be a meaningful first step in his campaign promise of eradicating graft and corruption.

Cayetano said that the FOI, once enacted, is "Aquino's best weapon in fighting off corruption because government transactions will then become more transparent and easier to access by the people, and therefore less prone to corruption." 

Under the FOI bill, all information pertaining to official acts, transactions or decisions, as well as government research data used as basis for policy development, regardless of their physical form or format in which they are contained and by whom they were made, can be made available to the public for scrutiny, copying and reproduction.

Cayetano stressed that under the FOI bill, compromise agreements, private sector participation agreements or contracts in infrastructure and development projects, procurement contracts, construction or concession agreements or contracts, loans, grants, development assistance, technical assistance and programs, loans from domestic and foreign financial institutions, guarantees, public funding extended to any private entity, bilateral or multilateral agreements and treaties, and licenses, permits or agreements, shall be subject to mandatory disclosure to the public save for some limited exceptions. (FREEMAN)