House panel approves consolidated FOI bill

MANILA, Philippines - After over a year of deliberations, the House committee on public information approved yesterday the consolidated version of the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill, which some of its authors described as “toothless” and would be harder to make public officials accountable for their actions.

The committee voted 10-3 to approve the proposed “Act to Strengthen the Right of Citizens to Information Held by the Government” that was consolidated from some 24 pending measures by the panel’s technical working group (TWG) in nine meetings since October last year.

Parañaque City Rep. Gustavo Tambunting, one of the authors of the measure, said the bill would strengthen the right of citizens to information held by the government.

“This measure will give the public access to information necessary in the exercise of the people’s right to effective and reasonable participation at all levels of decision-making affecting the lives of Filipinos,” Tambunting said shortly after the panel voted to approve the measure.

Before the voting of the committee, chaired by Misamis Occidental Rep. Jorge Almonte, Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Neri Colmenares sought further discussions on the bill, which he said was replete with provisions that tend to “make exceptions become the rule.”

“The draft (FOI Bill) continues to perpetuate the current limitations,” Colmenares told the panel.

He cited the suspicious insertion of what he said was a vague provision that a public official may deny a request for information on the grounds that it will frustrate the implementation of a policy or a law.

“Why are we making for our people and even the media difficult to obtain information with this catch-all phrase? Any official can invoke this to block all legitimate requests. This defangs the FOI Bill,” Colmenares said.

He lamented that he is one of the authors of the measure and yet the TWG and the committee itself chose to disregard his amendments.