Palace officials defend non-inclusion of FOI bill in priority measures

MANILA, Philippines - Palace officials arrived yesterday at the Senate in full force to defend the decision of President Aquino not to include the passage of the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill in his list of priority measures.

During a hearing, Sen. Gregorio Honasan, chairman of the committee on public information and mass media, and Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano vowed to work on the immediate passage of the bill before their terms end in 2013.

“I think there are more common grounds today. They communicated very clearly that this bill is also important to them. We are hoping that this will be the beginning of the end of discussions rather than the start of long and tedious discussions,” Cayetano said. 

With Palace officials joining the congressional deliberations on the issue, Cayetano saw the sincerity of the Aquino administration in institutionalizing transparency and good governance during his term.

“I believe that the Palace is in good faith when they said that they want a law that is workable and a law that will really be good. I think we have sent a message that there is more damage if there would be no FOI bill, rather than have an imperfect bill,” Cayetano said.

Honasan pointed out the timeline given by Palace officials seems acceptable to the committee to come out with a draft of their version of the bill.

Cayetano stressed the need to thresh out the matters on the Palace’s proposal to create an information commission, where one cannot file a case for not giving out information without the commission’s endorsement.

He said any provision on remedies in case of denial on FOI could render any appeal inutile.

“We are placing a new barrier to the exercise of rights under the Constitution,” he said.

Public interest, bill of rights

Integrated Bar of the Philippines president Roan Libarios echoed Cayetano’s concern, and discussed legal matters on the policy of the state to disclose information on public interest and the bill of rights, which grants the citizen the right to access of information.

“The coverage of the right is broader because it includes not only official information but records pertaining to officials acts and records pertaining to government researches,” Libarios said, which the Supreme Court recently ruled as self-explanatory and does not require further legislation.

“There is a need to distinguish on the state policy to disclose public information from the exercise of constitutional rights,” he added.

Protecting state interests

Secretary Ricky Carandang of the presidential communications development and strategic planning office explained the need for the Palace to disseminate and gather information as well as feedback from all stakeholders before they could recommend their stand on the FOI bill.

“As probably you understand sir, it is sometimes difficult to balance those competing interests. Our friends in media would want to thrive on as much disclosure as possible while we understand that, it is also our responsibility to ensure that in those disclosures we do not harm the State interests,” Carandang said.

On orders of the President, Carandang said he has tasked Undersecretary Manolo Quezon to work on the consultation with stakeholders to ensure that they are properly represented in the Palace’s version.

Cayetano noted that the Malacañang version has provided 10 exceptions to the bill, compared to House Bill 2354, which was adopted from the deliberations in the last Congress.  

Under the Palace’s version, the provision spelled out national security while Cayetano supported the version that included information directly related to national defense. –With Helen Flores