Despotic regimes tend to arrogantly brush away requests for information, branding it “not in the public interest”.
In many countries, including Malta, a Freedom of Information Act seeks to guard against such abuse, giving the public the right to obtain information held by the authorities to promote transparency and accountability in government.
Ten years after such leglisation was passed by Parliament, those exercising their rights under the law, particularly the media, continue to find that the Establishment is resistant to releasing certain information. It is usually thanks to the Data Protection Commissioner that they reluctantly accede.
That is why the recent decision by the commissioner ordering Economy Minister Chris Cardona to give Times of Malta access to his personal advisors’ contracts can be seen as a victory for freedom of information. After rejecting our application, the ministry had also declined a request by the commissioner to view a copy of the contracts so he could decide whether they should be published.
The matter ended up before the Information and Data Protection Appeals Tribunal, which disagreed with the ministry’s stand.
The commissioner eventually concluded there was no reason to justify the non-disclosure of the contracts.
One can only hope the government takes note of such decisions given the many requests it has turned down from Times of Malta and other media outlets over the past few years.
A case in point: we are still fighting to be told who was sitting on the evaluation committee handling the public call for tenders that was eventually won by Vitals Global Healthcare, because Projects Malta argues that doing so would breach data protection provisions.
It is, of course, blatantly in the public interest to know the composition of an evaluation committee involved in such a controversial decision. There is no other way of knowing, for instance, whether any of them might have had a conflict of interest.
Disclosure of the information has become all the more vital after a judge recently annulled the multi-million euro db Group permit in St George’s Bay on the basis that one of the members of the planning authority board that granted permission had a conflict of interest.
We also persevere in our efforts to view the contract awarded to Neville Gafà, an employee of the Office of the Prime Minister in a position of trust.
The OPM says no, on grounds that he is not high enough on the pay grade to justify publication of the contract, which contains personal data.
Now, Mr Gafà happens to be someone who, following meetings he held in Libya, was described by Tripoli as Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s special envoy. Castille had denied this.
Yet he subsequently formed part of an official government delegation that held talks with the Libyan government. It took Dr Muscat seven months to admit in Parliament that Mr Gafà was working for his office.
Failure to disclose information generates suspicion and favours abuse and corruption
Such instances, and a few others, only give rise to suspicion that what really motivates the authorities in rejecting requests for information is not a burning desire to stick to the word and spirit of the law but, rather, determination to hide embarrassing facts from the public.
It bears recalling what Ombudsman Anthony Mifsud declared in his annual report just over a year ago: failure by the government to disclose information “generates suspicion and favours abuse and corruption”.
The public administration, he continued, appeared to have adopted a generally negative approach towards its duty to disclose information and the citizen’s right to be informed.
Good governance demands that the public interest overrides any private interests.