Are we ready for RTI yet?
Despite reservations on the part of the legislators, experts within the region think so
2-Day Awareness Seminar: Whether the time was right to introduce the right to information legislation in the country was what dominated the discussion at the ongoing two-day awareness seminar on RTI yesterday at Terma Lingka resort.
On one side were the Bhutanese participants, comprising a few members of Parliament, civil servants, media spokespersons representing various government agencies, and reporters, who quizzed a panel of experts on RTI from the region.
It was mostly with scepticism, and a sense of apprehension, that participants viewed the introduction of the law in the country any time soon.
The legislative committee chairman of the National Assembly, Ugyen Wangdi, said the Bhutanese government was committed towards transparency, and that they had mechanisms in place to ensure the tradition continued.
He also talked about the cost involved in creating necessary institutions and infrastructure, should RTI be introduced in the country.
Another participant, who said he was “worried”, following the announcement information and communication secretary Dasho Kinley Dorji made, of the ministry’s intention to submit an RTI bill in the winter session of Parliament for discussion.
Based on what one speaker said about there being more nations introducing their own right to information legislation, amid many others that chose not to, why should the country rush into crafting and introducing an RTI law?
A parliamentarian asked why India took more than half a century to introduce its own RTI law.
National Council legislative committee chairperson, Kuenlay Tshering, used a Bhutanese proverb to sum up the argument, saying that, if one wished to build a house, it bore the person well to wait and build it later, as he or she could work on an improved one, based on those that came before it.
In addition to all that, the chief information commissioner of India, Satyananda Mishra, said apprehension emerged firstly from the fear of loss of power that came with the exclusivity of information a public official held.
The other two fears were that the law might open the doors far too wide for people to breathe down shoulders of public officials and, with proliferation of media, how the information would be used, and for what purpose.
Chairperson for national commission on minorities, Wajahat Habibullah, added there was no reason for people holding public office to fear the introduction of RTI, unless they had “skeletons” in their closets.
He said the introduction of the legislation did not necessarily spell huge additional financial burden.
“They’re a part of already established structures, and it only means someone could take up the additional responsibility of an information officer,” he said.
In India’s case, he said they had to have an information commission, because they had to deal with huge backlog of cases vis-a-vis RTI requests, and the judges were heavily overloaded.
“You have a judiciary that’s not heavily overloaded and, therefore, you don’t need an information commission,” he said.
A professor at the National University of Singapore, Ann Florini, agreed it would cost the country much less if it began early, before being inundated with huge backlogs, had staff resources to consider, and once it had active policies.
On why India delayed its RTI law, as did many other nations, Mr Mishra said, while he could not answer on behalf of people, who did not call the shots with regards to introducing the RTI law in India some 50 years ago, he said Bhutan did not have to hold back its legislation, just because others were delaying it.
So long as the law promised something good for the nation and its people, he said there was no point wondering why other nations did not introduce RTI Act, and wait until they did.
Mr Habibullah, in the same vein, added that the UK based its law on the Magna Carta that dated back some 500 years ago.
“You don’t have to wait just as long, because some other nation did,” he said. “If you have a patronising view of the people, then we have no say.”
He said RTI did have issues, but its discussion had less to do with whether to have RTI or not for Bhutan.
“How it can be made to work better should be the discussion,” he said.
A civil society member in India, Shekhar Singh, reflected to the Bhutanese participants the same question they posed the panelists at the start.
“Of the more than 200 nations that have RTI legislation today, none of them have the happiness index,” he said. “Should they begin asking it’s just Bhutan that has it, while most don’t, so why should we have it?”
By Samten Wangchuk in Kuensel