Rolling out the red carpet for Special Committee on FOIA

Rolling out the red carpet for Special Committee on FOIA

Ignatius Haryanto, Campaign Coordinator, Coalition for Freedom
of Information Act, Jakarta

The House of Representatives (DPR) in their plenary session
announced on Feb. 18 the setting up of its Special Committee on
the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It is positive news for
several groups in society, since a number of non-governmental
organizations have waited for a long time for legislators to
discuss the bill.

The DPR adopted the initiative to formulate the bill in March
2002, and it has taken almost a year to step into the next phase
of discussing the Freedom of Information Act.

The Coalition for Freedom of Information welcomes the special
committee and hopes that members will discuss the bill seriously
and open their minds to input from society, as well as the
government side.

There have been many obstacles for legislators to discuss the
bill, following their completion of the present Broadcasting Law
and recent Election Law.

We face several challenges relating to the issue of freedom of
information. Society still faces a regime which is inclined
toward oppression, which controls most information that it is
reluctant to share, so it can easily manipulate the information
for its own benefit.

There are many examples to illustrate such reluctance, and in
turn we see more and more corruption and bribery. A more serious
impact of this situation is that the government is not
accountable and transparent in the eyes of the public.

Thus, the freedom of information act is very important for
society to monitor government activities and budget spending.
This act will ensure that society is heard and can participate in
public policy making.

If we look at the recent Transparency International's Global
Corruption Report 2003, Indonesia is placed as the seventh most
corrupt country among 106 countries surveyed by Transparency
International. This rank shows that Indonesia is worse than any
other Southeast Asian country, and Indonesia is only slightly
better than countries like Kenya, Angola, Madagascar, Paraguay,
Nigeria and Bangladesh.

One interesting aspect from this report is that Transparency
International this year focused on the issue of Freedom of
Information, as part of many vehicles to abolish corrupt practices
all over the world. The same report also stated that the mass
media has a bigger role to uncover, and eliminate corruption --
although a potential convergence of media groups of international
scope is seen as another obstacle to uncover corrupt practices,
especially if it relates to big transnational corporations --
observers cite the case of Enron in which the media was
considered to have been too upbeat to the extent of being unable
to see possible shortcomings.

But at least the media can give the public access to stories
about corruption and how the government runs its operations.

Faisal Basri, the noted economist, said that the problem of
corruption in Indonesia had already become a problem of
civilization, since Indonesia is ranked among the most
underdeveloped countries in the world in the context of this
corruption issue.

If we look at some recent examples, like the case of price
hikes in electricity, oil and water, the government declined to
expose its planning and calculations.

On the other hand the government has a plan to subsidize the
debts of conglomerates. In short, the government tends to give
more subsidies to conglomerates, rather than subsidies for the
public in the case of electricity and water rates and oil prices.

Other cases like the price hike in liquid petroleum gas also
shows that the state oil company, Pertamina, is very closed in
giving information to public. The Indonesian Consumers Foundation
(YLKI) sued Pertamina for its price hike in 2001, and the case
was still being processed through the courts when again it raised
its prices in 2002.

In court, the YLKI lawyer demanded that Pertamina show its
written announcement declaring the price increase, but after one
year, Pertamina has still resisted this demand, despite a written
request from the Ministry of Mining and Energy and the National
Ombudsman Council.

In the case of the recently completed election bill, political
parties tended to reject control over their sources of finances,
and financial audits before and after election day.

This rejection should be looked at carefully, because it can
be one way for big conglomerates to collude with political
parties to cover up past corruption practices including money
laundering. A large part of party income comes from the public,
hence it is a must for political parties to be transparent with
their voters.

In other cases regarding regional governments, regional
leaders have thought that the regional development financial
draft plans are a classified document, thus ordinary people
cannot access it; and as a consequence the regional councillors
can manipulate the document for their own benefit.

Again, a large portion of regional income comes from taxpayers
in particular regions, hence it should be their responsibility to
be accountable to their supporters. Instead we see that regional
councillors "creatively" create an additional budget just to get
more income.

All legislators should open their eyes to such facts, and
demonstrate their best efforts to eliminate such cases in the
future.

People are placing high hopes on this special committee, to
ensure that people can access information from public officials
so that people can control their performance, and can participate
in public policy making. The public, after all, is the major
stakeholder in this country.