KOTA KINABALU – Sabah Law Society (SLS) is pushing for the federal government to enact the Freedom of Information Act to enable public access to Putrajaya’s official information.
SLS president Roger Chin said events in the past few months have revealed the necessity of the act so that the public could access information and put accountability on public authorities for their actions.
He said access to official information can also improve public confidence as well as trust in government, and public sector bodies will be seen as being open.
“Freedom of information (FOI) is fundamentally a right given to the people to request information from the government.
“It fosters openness and transparency in the government. Secrecy in public affairs can only be curtailed by the oversight of the people. FOI enables the public to develop a clearer image of what is happening inside the government,” he said in a statement today.
Chin said transparency and openness only strengthen accountability and enhance the credibility of the political and economic system.
He said it will rekindle faith in the government because any case of poor performance, inefficacy, dishonesty, and duplicity are readily exposed and rooted out by public oversight.
He also said that FOI legislation would expose corruption in the government, as it would give everyone equal access to government spending, procedures and contracts.
Chin explained that in Malaysia, despite having FOI enactments in Selangor and Penang, the federal legislature has yet to attempt to bring the FOI motion to be tabled before the Parliament.
He said no specific statute on FOI has been passed at the federal level to date.
The current framework of the information system is tightly regulated by the Official Secrets Act 1972 (OSA), and this statute generally exempts all classified information from disclosure for any purpose unless the proper authority declassifies the said information.
Chin said the Malaysian OSA covers all types of disclosure of any classified document, no matter how trivial or unrelated it is to national security, defence, or crime prevention.
“Some sixty years after the founding of Malaysia and as Malaysia enters into the last third of her first century, the time has come for this nation of ours to install navigational aids such as an FOI Act to warn of dangerous areas ahead and ensure Malaysia’s future as a democratic jurisdiction,” he added. – The Vibes, August 14, 2022.
