Freedom of Information Bill Morphed into ...

..a Charter Association by the Executive

“…Responding to a question as to whether there was any lesson Ghana could take from the Kenyan experience, he (President Kufour) said the country had already known the implication of mishandled elections, citing the parliamentary election boycott in 1992, by the New Patriotic Party (NPP)…” (GNA Goofs, Ghanaweb 11 January 2008)).

President Kufour’s recent trip to Kenya to mediate the current crises in that country got some of us thinking about the challenges and heartaches of compromising with individuals in government who are bent on holding on power at all cost, individuals who will ignore a Freedom of Information Bill (FOIB) for years, even though a FOIB is supported by a solid national coalition. That trip has some Kibakian and Obasanjoan lessons for Ghanaians not previously identified by President Kufour or even discussed here on Ghanaweb. Both Kibaki (current “leader” of Kenya by executive fiat), and Obasanjo (former leader of Nigeria), have frustrated attempts at passing the FOIB in their respective countries. But it is the Kibakian-Kenyan connection that is the subject of this article given the rough circumstances in Kenya right now.

For a country (Ghana) and a President (Kufour) who do not have a carrot or a stick to share or impress diplomatically, it ought to have been elementary in the minds of the president’s advisors that junketing expensively to Kenya would probably be fruitless unless both “antagonists” agreed to pre-conditions for the trip right from the start, voluntarily. One such condition would have been a demand to freeze everything at the point the decision to travel was approved by each side. Then the Kufour government, in global FOIB-style, could have “informed” the Ghana and the World exactly why and when he would go to Kenya. We now know the result of that visit. Suffice to say that whatever was won could have been cheaply gotten by telephone calls and could have avoided gratuitous use of the highest power in the land and at such great expense, compared to available national resources and the annual income per capita itself, for example. But we digress!!

GROGGY KENYA - ONCE THE-MOST-STABLE?

Regarding the FOIB, Kenya is quite an enigma. A review of several online sources shows that Kenya has had a draft FOIB wholly supported by the population and a very strong and active coalition for a very long time. However, that draft bill had not been passed by the Kibaki government at the end of Kibaki’s first term, as it is the case in Ghana, nearly at the end of Kufour’s second term in office. But Kenya’s draft FOIB made significant in-roads as far back as 2002. However, when December 2007 arrived, Kibaki was more interested in being re-elected than in pushing Kenya’s FOIB. We can say that Kibaki used his “Freedom of Information Act” to inform Kenyans that he wanted to cling on to power. But Kibaki was not interested in approving the Kenya FOIB even if Kenyans could use it to understand, transparently and accountably, why a certain count of the votes turned up a certain way, should it be necessary. Now you know the rest of the Kenyan story. But do you know the rest of the Ghana story?

Of course, this is not to say that the neglect by Kibaki to approve the Kenyan FOIB before December 2007 is the cause of the current “killing and destructive” impasse in Kenya. But, any intelligent mind can assume that there is some association between the failure to pass that bill and the current stalemate that has reportedly caused the deaths of over 500 Kenyans, rendered over 12,000 people homeless, threatens the lives of over 500,000 with hunger, with untold destruction of property. I will discuss the implication for Ghana and why I think the President Kufour and his advisors are misinforming and mis-directing the people’s attention about the Ghana FOIB. But first, I’d like to throw some light on the stalled Kenyan draft of the FOIB.

LESSONS FROM DRAFT KENYAN FOIB:

Writing in May of 2007 for the Pambazuka News, Ms. Priscilla Nyokabi, a Program Officer of the Kenya International Conference on Jurists (ICJ), said the draft Kenyan FOIB “…promises to usher in an era of openness, transparency and accountability in Kenya…. (and)…confirm Kenya as a leading democracy in Africa, and among the top five countries to have an FOI Law…Only South Africa, Angola and Uganda have access to information regimes…” So who dropped the Kenya FIOB but Kibaki?

A review of the Kenya draft FOIB tells us that without doubt, the provisions in the unsigned Kenya FOIB are on a par with international standards, unlike the Ghana draft that has been made public so far, with its million loopholes, that now seems to have been transformed into a thousand disparate associative “New Charters.” Like the UK FOIB, the Kenyan FOIB establishes an independent FOI Commission to be selected/vetted by the National Assembly from which the President must choose 9 members for a list of twelve, and with consideration for “Kenya’s ethnic, geographical, cultural, political, social and economic diversity and the principle of gender equity.” The bill provides that FOI Commissioners shall “act as the chief agent of the Government in ensuring that all public authorities comply with its obligations under international treaties and conventions on access to information…to approve information dissemination procedures including publication schemes for proactive disclosure of information by all public authorities.” The Chairperson and Commissioners ordinarily should be qualified as Appeals Court judge and High Court Judges, respectively, for up to 5-year terms that are staggered.

The important points here with respect to the Kenya draft are that (1) the membership pool is not initiated by the President nor is there a veto, (2) any citizen can be nominated by Parliament who is qualified, (3) the President must chooses from the list, (4) no ministers, the President, or any other public official can decide who will get what information from the government.

WHEN GHANA’S FOIB WAS TRANSFOREMD INTO AN ASSOCAITION CHARTER FOR BUREAUCRATS A funny thing happened on the way to the Ghana FOIB dance!!

The recent news item from the GNA titled “Government, four agencies sign Charter” (Ghanaweb, 9 Jan 07) made interesting reading if only because there was not a single word about the FOIB. Reportedly, the “New Charter” that was signed by Mrs. Mary Chinery-Hesse, Special Advisor to the President will “enhance efficient and timely service delivery to the public…(by)…Births and Deaths Registry, Passport Office, Public Records and Archives Administration Department and Rent Control Department.” Frankly, it is a duplicative and confusing mess if you ask Prof Lungu. Consider that “So far 11 agencies within the land and revenue sectors had signed the charter” and Mr. Samuel Owusu-Agyei, Minister of Public Sector Reform, committed to providing “necessary support to all agencies to develop and launch their charters…that a Charter Handbook was being drawn up and would soon be made available” to all Ministries, Departments, and Agencies and Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies “to help them formulate their own charters.”

ITEM: Say what? What happened to the FOIB dance? Why are we been treated to a FOIB-light sad song? Further, who can explain to us with a straight face how a “New Charter” initially launched by President Kufour in October 2007 “as a means to make the public service more “responsive and accountable” has in the space of only 7 weeks been transformed into a quest for “efficiency and timely delivery” of public services. Why the “Numbers” and “Efficiency” game?

Question is, does Mrs. Mary Chinery-Hesse know that an agency can be “efficient and timely” but strongly articulated to absolutely the wrong purpose, and is obstinately non-transparent, and unaccountable? The other question for Mrs. Mary Chinery-Hesse is, when did Ghana’s public agencies become “Associations” of voluntary-democratic public agencies, non-hierarchical agencies even, with the “Freedom” to choose to sign up to serve the people in what ever manner their Heads elect, under or over a “Charter”? Can the reader feel the sand in the eyes and smell a rat in the nose?

Further, as a leader and representing the President and as themselves, have Mrs. Mary Chinery-Hesse and President Kufour (a trained lawyer) ever heard of a Presidential Directive that orders agencies to comply with important public policies, and to achieve compliance before a certain date in a manner prescribed by the Presidential Directive? Why is Ghana so different from other countries that the President and the people of Ghana must practically beg Ghana’s public agencies to be “efficient and timely”, assuming those two values are in the public interest in the first place?

Moreover, is the ‘New Charter” a charter for Citizens or a charter for the Agencies. Does Mrs. Mary Chinery-Hesse recognize that there is a difference here? To assist, the difference, in Prof Lungu’s mind, relates to what input the People, as citizens of the Republic and Sovereign, contributed to the development of the “New Charter” And if the people did not have any input in developing the ‘New Charter”, how do we know each of the numerous Charters will serve the people and not promote and maintain “the widespread irritation, frustration and desperation encountered by the public in effort to access public services and opportunities” in those Agencies?

ITEM: Prof Lungu understands the intent “to put an end to the system where clients receive prompt and satisfactory services because of who they are, whom they know, the weight of their pocket-books or where they come from." But why a hundred odd “New Charters” and abandonment of the FOIB? Do Mrs. Mary Chinery-Hesse and Attorney General Joe Ghartey really know what a FOIB can accomplish for a nation if they are really serious and articulated to the public interest and agenda? Or must we conclude that they are both serving the powerful and doing their bidding as part of a concealed program to marginalize and annihilate the draft FOIB, even as they pretend they are interested in an accountable government for the people.

EXCUSE US, WE MUST KILL THE FOIB!

Of all the statements reported in the “New Charter” article, what strikes Prof Lungu as especially depressing is the attempt by President Kufour and Mrs. Chinery-Hesse to make an end-run around the FOIB by positioning a Trojan Horse in the form of the so-called “Central Complaints Unit” under “the Office of the President” to receive complaints from the public “when services provided by the agencies were not satisfactory.” What is the revelation about “Complaints” these days and whose definition are we using this time? What about information, the right of the people to send and information to/from their government in whatever manner they choose, Mrs. Mary Chinery-Hesse?

Can Mrs. Mary Chinery-Hesse and the President explain why would it be more productive and useful for the people to have a “Central Complaints Unit” under him, than say, under FOIB Commissioners or under the Parliament of Ghana? And what “efficient” about having the Public Sector Reform minister being responsible for providing “the necessary support to all agencies…to develop and launch their charters…to help them formulate their own charters.” In the single case of the District Assemblies (DA), substantively, what does one DA do that is different from another and that explains why each DA must develop its own Charter? The same can be asked of all the MDAs and MAs.

There is now reason to conclude that by this so-called “Central Complaints Unit” in the Office of the President, President Kufour and Mrs. Chinery-Hesse are showing that duplication in the use of Ghana’s limited resources is of no consequence. Further, we are to understand that it is better to be “efficient and timely” than to be transparent and accountable, FOIB-style. In this context, we must now conclude, painfully, that President Kufour, Mrs. Chinery-Hesse, and Mr. Joe Ghartey have now chosen to abandon the FOIB law, in duplicitous and bad faith, and/or with benign neglect, Kibaki-style.

ITEM: In Prof Lungu’s judgment, there is nothing that the “New Charter” can do that a FOIB cannot do quicker, more authoritatively, cheaper, more transparently, and above all, more accountably for everyone in Ghana. While a FOIB cuts to the chase, a “Charter” begs for permission and action from persons who are already one with the status quo. Ghana deserves better professional service than that from, from President Kufour, Mrs. Chinery-Hesse, Mr. Joe Ghartey and all those persons holding up the Ghana FOIB.

WAY FORWARD FOR GHANA

It is about time to that we move the Ghana FOIB law forward. Lessons from Nigeria, another African country where a FOIB is stalled shows us how to go forward with respect to the FOIB, until successfully passed. In Nigeria, the Guardian News reported in Sep 2007 that a bill passed by the lawmakers of the previous legislative session “was eventually stalled” because Obasanjo refused to sign it. Senator Omar Abubakar Hambagda, Borno State, is of the same opinion. Reportedly, Obasanjo cited “issues of national security and 'inappropriateness' of the Bill's title as reasons for declining his assent.” Now I do not know about you, but Prof Lungu is seeing some parallels with the Nigerian case also.

Bottom line is, lessons from Kenya, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe tell us that Ghanaians and Ghana supporters (including politicians) interested in passage of the FOIB must fight hard or forget about it. The FOIB is truly a poison pill to many Ghanaian politicians and public officials. In the Guardian News report titled “Rights advocates launch fresh campaign for FOIB,” Kabir Garba informed readers that the Nigerian Freedom of Information Coalition, an advocacy group for the FOIB, started in May 2007 the “process of generating one million signatures in support of the campaign for the passage of the Bill by the National Assembly to “accompany a petition that will be forwarded to the lawmakers…confirming the popularity of the bill among Nigerians…(and to)…stimulate the legislators in order to fast track action on the bill.” Ghanaians and Ghana supporters (including politicians) interested in passage of the FOIB must act now. Ghana does not have the luxury of waiting. In that sense, Kibaki is teaching Ghana a better lesson than Kufour can teach Kibaki in a million years. Get Ghana’s house in order well before the next (first) vote is cast in 2008. Pass a strong FOIB now and tie it to the Whistle-Blower law and to the Election laws. As we must say, what a crappy life some people must defend and others must suffer from, all the time!