The quest for information

Mar 24, 2011 Editorial

Each day it becomes increasingly clear that the government is serious about transparency but old habits die hard. Governments are not known to talk about its plans and programmes. In fact, Government sees all its actions as being in the realm of confidentiality.
In Guyana, for example, if a leading politician becomes ill, the nature of the illness is never disclosed until some enterprising person opts to break the mould and to speak out. More often than not, one is likely to hear about an invasion of privacy and the right of people to keep their illnesses pretty much to themselves and to their immediate families.
We have grown accustomed to what prevails in the United States because about eighty per cent of our communication originates in that country. Most of the news is out of the United States, followed by the news broadcasts out of the United Kingdom. Guyanese are made aware that world leaders have little or no privacy when it comes to matters of their health. The view is that people need to know about the welfare of their leaders. Every detail is made public. As the leader is preparing to enter hospital the public is made aware.
In Guyana this is not the case. If indeed the news comes out, then there is a token media release that is as bland as anything. The Police Commissioner is hospitalised and the nation knows nothing. It might be to the credit of the police commissioner that he does not command the kind of interest someone in his position, in other countries, would have commanded.
Health issues apart, the government is often not too keen to release details about some of the things that are happening. On Tuesday, the company responsible for the construction of the Amaila Falls Hydro electric project made public information on the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment. This was a study that had been in the works for years.
As the largest shareholder in the hydro project, one would have expected the government to make the announcement of the findings. Instead, this was done by the private developer.
It was the same with the One Laptop Per Family programme. It was not until the media raised so many questions as to bring the project into disrepute that the government stepped forward with some answers.
Public projects were secret until questions about accountability arose. The government decided that the charges of corruption were becoming prevalent so it decided that it would put measures in place for specification of these projects to be made available.
There are other projects that should be made public. For example, the government is moving ahead to construct a special hospital. To his credit, President Bharrat Jagdeo made this announcement. But the government is silent about the problems at the University of Guyana.
Had a private document not been leaked to the media one would never have known that the university was cash-strapped; that it was spending more than it was earning and was therefore in a poor position to maintain staff.
President Jagdeo would leave Guyana from time to time. That too is a secret because more often than not the nation is only made aware when he returns. He was asked about this on one occasion and his response was that there were people in Office of the Ministry who should make such information readily available to the public.
The media would now like a Freedom of Information Act. The reporters are not satisfied to ferret out the news using a number of clandestine sources and sometimes run the risk of being fed misinformation.
And every reporter is familiar that the authorities often ignore the crux of the matter but zero in on the slightest mistake. Then there is the threat of litigation. Many people who end up in the glare of the media resort to the courts in an attempt to halt all reports that could prove embarrassing.
Sometimes, some of the litigation is frivolous but media houses are aware that even the most frivolous litigation could prove costly to defend. And it matters not that the litigant has no intention of pursuing the matter.
That is one of the bugbears to investigating reporting and the quiet drive for disclosures of things that should be in the public domain.

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