Senate and civil groups to give a shot on FOI bill

Submitted to the House Secretary General on the first day of the 16th Congress, the member-groups under the Right to Know, Right Now! Coalition noted that under RA 6735, the bill filed through indirect initiative “shall have precedence over the pending legislative measures on the committee.” Photo courtesy of the Philippine Center of Investigative Journalism

With the opening of the 16^th congress, re-elected senators Chiz Escudero and Alan Peter Cayetano launched their own versions of the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill after it failed to pass second reading in the 15^th Congress.

“Transparency is a key factor in our fight against corruption,” Senator Escudero said before the election recess.

He said that the public has the right to be informed regarding transactions involving public interest and that they have the right to demand accountability from the government.

Cayetano also said that transparency and accountability should be institutionalized and should not depend on the leader or the leadership.

“There is an urgent need to follow through and institutionalize President Aquino’s anticorruption and transparency initiatives, and the immediate passage of this bill consolidates and concretizes existing efforts,” Cayetano said in his explanatory note.

Both the senators feel the need of passing the bill as it has long been languishing and not prioritized in the past two Congresses.

Other newly appointed senators also showed their support in pushing through the bill in the opening of the Congress.

The Senate was also able to pass a version of the bill entitled People’s Ownership of Government Information Law (POGI) but the House of Representatives failed to act on it and was left hanging in the plenary before the election recess.

Last Monday, the Right to Know, Right Now! Coalition marched to the House of Representatives in Quezon City to file their own version of the bill called the People’s Freedom of Information Act of 2013.

The provision of their version declares that the state should disclose to the public all its transactions involving public interest, except those which can put the nation into jeopardy.

Senators and civil groups have passed different versions of the bill but the decision to pass it or not is still left to the Congress and with the approval of the President.

(Patricia Viktoria Ong/The Viktorian Press)

Sources: The Philippine Daily Inquirer, Sunstar, ABS-CBN News