ARGENTINA: Congress Delays Action on Transparency Law

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Apr 29 2003 (IPS) - Argentines have the right to request information from government bodies, and public employees must be held accountable for their acts, according to a bill aimed at making government action more transparent, which has been awaiting passage by Congress for nearly a year.

The proposed new law on access to public information, similar to those that already exist in Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru and the United States, was drafted by the Anti-Corruption Office’s division of planning of transparency policies, which answers to the Justice Ministry.

According to opinion polls, corruption is one of the most pressing concerns of Argentines, who express an almost total lack of confidence and trust in their institutions due to the severely damaged prestige and credibility of the country’s political leaders.

Passage of the draft law, which was introduced in May 2002, is of ”vital importance,” because it will ”permit Argentine society to monitor and scrutinise the acts of government and the actions of their representatives,” Néstor Baragli, the director of the Anti-Corruption Office’s division of planning of transparency policies, told IPS.

”Public officials should be held accountable for their decisions, and citizens should get used to keeping an eye on their representatives, with access to prior knowledge of the activities carried out within the state,” explained the official, one of the main sponsors of the bill.

The draft law, drawn up with input from non-governmental organisations (NGOs), has the backing of caretaker President Eduardo Duhalde – in office until May 25 – and all of the country’s parties, and has already made it through the corresponding congressional technical commissions.

Nevertheless, Congress has delayed approval of the new law for almost a year.

”This is not a convenient law for our political leaders, which is why they all give it lip service but show no interest in actually passing it – and much less now, during election time,” lawyer Carolina Vartsky with the Centre for Legal and Social Studies, one of the NGOs that took part in drafting the law, told IPS.

The first round of presidential elections was held on Sunday, and the two front-runners, Peronists Carlos Menem and Néstor Kirchner, will go to a runoff on May 18.

Under the new law, the state would operate like ”a transparent box,” and citizens, in the name of an association or as private individuals, would only have to write a letter requesting the information, to which they would be entitled to a response within 20 days, Vartsky explained.

Citizens’ right to access to public information would apply to all executive, legislative and judicial institutions, although in the case of the judiciary, it would be limited to administrative questions, and would not cover issues dealt with by the courts.

The bill states the need to ”generate a space for citizen participation” in public affairs and ”combat structural corruption” – two issues regarded as pending subjects yet to be addressed by Argentina’s democratic governments since the end of the last dictatorship (1976-1983).

”Freedom of access to information is the best antidote to corruption in governments, and indirectly it is an effective strategy for improving government administration,” according to the bill, which was approved by the Chamber of Deputies’ commissions on constitutional matters and freedom of expression.

To come up with the best possible format for the law, the Anti- Corruption Office held workshops and debates with journalists, press officers in public agencies, civil rights groups, political leaders, and business representatives.

At a late 2002 seminar organised by the Inter-American Dialogue, a leading think tank on western hemisphere affairs, lawmakers discussed the political resistance to approval of the law, and press officers expressed their fears of providing information that their superiors are reluctant to hand over.

In the meeting, Eduardo Bertoni, Organisation of American States (OAS) special rapporteur for freedom of expression, said ”laws on access to information should be considered a useful tool for boosting transparency in public administration and fighting corruption.”

The bill stipulates that all information in the hands of the state must be released, in its existing format, to any citizen who files a request, with the sole exception of sensitive issues that are expressly exempted by the law, such as documents on public security and defence.

Nor would personal information, like the home telephone numbers or addresses of public employees and officials, be made available under the law. But citizens would have access to the personal financial disclosure reports that public officials are required to file with the Anti-Corruption Office.

The information covered by the new law could be in the form of written documents, recordings, or photos, and must be released no more than 10 days after requested, unless there is a justified delay, which could lead to an additional 10-day wait.

If the person or group requesting information receives no response within the 20 days prescribed by the law, the official responsible for that public agency or office would be sanctioned under administrative proceedings, in accordance with the agency or office’s own internal regulations.

But they could also face penal sanctions, since applicants who are denied the information they request can take legal action on charges of ”incompliance with the duties of a public official,” a criminal offence that is already established by the penal code.

Vartsky noted that the southern province of Chubut and the city of Buenos Aires already have local laws on access to public information, which served as the blueprint for the national bill introduced in Congress.

But a congresswoman who asked not to be identified commented to IPS that passage of ”the new law is inconvenient for many, because it implies accepting the scrutiny of citizens, and especially journalists and civil society organisations.”