Coalition petitions President Mahama to expedite passage of Right to Information Bill
Coalition on the Right to Information (RTI), Ghana has presented a petition to President John Mahama calling on him to intervene and expedite the passage of the RTI Bill.
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The petition, which was received by the Chief of Staff, Mr Julius Debrah, also urged President Mahama to engage Parliament to resume and accelerate the deliberation on the RTI Bill.
Currently the RTI Bill is at the consideration stage in Parliament.
The petition was signed by the steering committee members of the Coalition on RTI, Ghana.
They include the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC), the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD), and the Ghana Trades Union Congress (TUC).
In March this year, Parliament began the consideration of the Bill after the Select Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs had made proposals.
Between March and June, 2016, Parliament was only able to consider 29 out of 157 clauses of amendments.
However, Parliament suspended the consideration of the RTI Bill and rather considered other bills, some of which have been passed.
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Unsuccessful promises
According to the petition, despite the promise made by Parliament that the RTI Bill would be passed during its second sitting, nothing had been done.
“In all our engagements with Parliament, we are assured by both the Majority and the Minority members of Parliament that the RTI Bill will be passed in its second sitting for the year , that is from May-July, 2016.
“Even at the 117th UN Human Rights Committee meeting, Members of Parliament led by the Deputy Attorney General, Dr Dominic Ayine, assured the international community that the RTI Bill will be passed by July 22, this year, and that the President has personally tasked him to attend Parliament regularly to ensure that the bill is passed, but this promise has failed to materialise,” it said.
Implications
Speaking on behalf of the committee that presented the petition, the President of GJA, Mr Affrail Monnie, said the absence of the RTI law and the current delay in its passage meant that Ghanaians would continue to struggle in their quest to effectively participate in governance and hold their leaders accountable.
“Secondly, the non-fulfilled promise at various international platforms that the bill will be passed by this administration is a dent on the image of the country and puts the credibility of the government into question,” he said.
Ghana signed onto the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Initiative in 2011 and made commitments in both the 2013/14 and 2016/17 National Action Plans to pass the RTI Bill.
Mr Monnie said the failure by Ghana to pass the bill years on “makes the country’s OGP participation questionable”, adding that signing onto the OGP was an indication that the government was committed to promoting transparency, accountability and active citizen participation.
In the absence of the RTI law, he said Ghanaians, including MPs, would be limited in their ability to effectively scrutinise the nature of loan agreements and contracts that might be signed in the name of Ghana.
“An effective RTI law will set out the mechanisms by which citizens and indeed all persons can enjoy the constitutional right to access information,” Mr Monnie added.