Corruption would have been curbed in the tenure of the past Philippine presidents, beginning with Corazon C. Aquino up to her son, Benigno S. Aquino III, if a Freedom of Information Law were passed. An FOI law would have prevented large-scale theft of public funds that were funnelled out though various means such as the Priority Development Assistance Fund and the Disbursement Acceleration Program under President Aquino. Although both the PDAF—derisively called pork barrel—and the DAP were eventually declared void by the Supreme Court for being unconstitutional, large amounts of taxpayers’ money were lost to corruption before the PDAF and DAP were discovered and exposed.
While the 1987 Constitution itself provides for the exercise by the Filipino people of the right to information, Congress has been dragging its feet in passing the law. For three decades now, an FOI bill has been lying idle in the backburners of Congress illustrating the sad truth to the saying that we cannot expect the legislators to pass a law that will be detrimental to them.
Fortunately, President Rodrigo R. Duterte has the political will to carry out his campaign promise that in his watch freedom of information would become a reality. He decided not to wait for Congress to pass such law. While waiting for its passage, he issued Executive Order no. 2 on July 23, 2016 mandating freedom of information in the Executive Department. This Executive Order took effect on Friday, November 25, giving the people the right to now look into the transactions of 15 national government agencies by using the eFOI portal or the electronic site for FOI.
The Executive Order is not perfect because it covers only the Executive Branch; still, with this move, the President is sending a strong message to Congress that it must pass the FOI law to cover all branches of government lest it be shamed.
The agencies that may now be accessed online are the Departments of Information and Communications Technology, Budget and Management, Finance, Justice, Health, Transportation, the Presidential Communications Office, Philippine Statistics Authority, National Archives of the Philippines, Philippine National Police, Philippine Health Insurance Corp., Office of the Government Corporate Counsel, Presidential Commission on Good Government, Office of the Solicitor General and Public Attorney’s Office. Although the Departments of Education, Social Welfare and Public Works are still inaccessible online, their transactions may already be checked by manual method.
Responsible government officials can face administrative sanctions if they refuse to give the information requested. However, as in most FOI laws all over the world, our FOI in the executive branch has exemptions to access among which are data relating to national security and defense, international relations, law enforcement and protection of the public and personal safety, those covered by executive privilege, and those affecting the privacy of minors and victims of crimes.
Looking at the big picture, there are now more than 100 countries worldwide that have FOI laws. The law has proved to be an effective tool to prevent or expose abuses, improve delivery of services, and protect human rights as well as the environment. In the United Kingdom where FOI is among the most robust in the world, the excessive travel expenses of the members of parliament, including the Prime Minister, was exposed in 2007. In the US, civil rights groups invoked FOI to gain access to data on a number of wrongly convicted capital punishment prisoners. In Mexico, the FOI Act was used to open up records of human rights abuses. Statistical data taken from a census in 2013 show that the countries in the world that topped the Open Data Index also rated high in the World Governance Indicators and are among the wealthiest countries with strong internet penetration. These are: the United Kingdom, the USA, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
The President has taken a bold step by putting in place transparency and accountability in the executive department. Congress must do its part by enacting into law the people’s right to information. This is the only way to ensure that the right is institutionalized and made applicable in the entire government structure including the legislature and the judiciary. Otherwise, even the FOI over the executive branch is at risk of being withdrawn at whim by any succeeding chief executive.
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