Because the old one is full of crap

There’s much talk right now about the Freedom of Information Bill that was not passed by the Philippine Congress and I think crying over the non-passage of this bill is just another one of those hyped up wastes of time.

It was a melodrama acted out in Congress for the benefit of the presumptively elected President, who now crows “I, Noynoy Aquino, will fight for this bill and make it a priority of my administration.”

Great! Let’s see if this Wilderness Boy really work for the passage of a law that basically does nothing more than what is already being done now.

Force of Law my ass.

In 2009, a few bloggers began writing about it and one idea that stuck out was that having a Freedom of Information Act in the Philippines would have helped immensely in unraveling the truth behind the ‘Hello Garci’ tapes.

The US has had an FIA since 1974 and its history is closely tied to the Watergate Scandal.  Part of the FIA and FIA related statutes is that all communication (after the Watergate Scandal) made by the President is required by law to be recorded.

In the hotly and hysterically discussed Philippine FIA, there is not a single provision that states that all the President’s communications (including cellphone calls, tweets, skype, etcetera) are deemed public records.

Weeks before President Barak Obama was to be sworn in, several news items and opinion columns asked the question of whether Barak would retain his twitter/facebook capable Blackberry.  And, this was when the whole FIA or FOIA was discussed years after the Watergate Scandal, mainly on the point that Barak’s direct communications with the world at large through twitter might need to be screened.

Without a provision in the Philippine FIA bill that states that all the President’s communications as well as the communications of his/her heads of agencies should be recorded and deemed part of public record, the FIA won’t be able to do much.

In local parlance, it will be a BORLOLOY LAW.