Philippines: Analysis of Draft Right to Information Bill
The Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD) has submitted an assessment of the draft Philippine Act Enabling the People’s Constitutional Right of Access to Information (Right to Information or RTI Bill) to the House Committee on Public Information, as that Committee is presently reviewing the RTI Bill.
The Philippines does well in terms of its guarantees of RTI, earning 83%, and the scope of coverage of the Bill is quite broad (73%) but in most other areas the Bill hovers around 60% and it drops to 40% in terms of the system of appeals.
The CLD submission contains numerous recommendations for improving the Bill, of which some of the most important are as follows:
- A broad review of the Bill for technical quality and simplicity should be undertaken to ensure that it is as clear and understandable as possible.
- The definitions of public authorities and information in the Bill should be simplified and broadened.
- The procedures for submitting and processing requests for information should be improved, so as to make them as simple and user friendly as possible.
- The standards in the RTI law should override secrecy provisions in other laws in case of conflict, rather than preserve them.
- The role of the RTI Commission in appeals should be clarified and its independence should be substantially bolstered.
- The protections currently offered to the RTI Commission and its personnel should be extended to all officials.
Some of CLD’s recommendations have already been incorporated into the RTI Bill and CLD encourages the members of the House Committee on Public Information to consider seriously all of our recommendations.
The full analysis is available here and the Bill which we analysed is available here.
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