Press Institute urges President to enact Right To Information

The Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI) on Friday addressed a letter to President Mahinda Rajapaksa raising concerns regarding freedom of information and the necessity for enactment of the Right To Information (RTI) in Sri Lanka in the background of the Eighteenth Summit of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to be held in Nepal this month.

The letter addressed to the President by the Press Institute highlighted the urgent need to enact a Right to Information (RTI) in line with similar statutes in India and other SAARC countries. “Agitation for the enactment of such a law has been ongoing in Sri Lanka since 1995 with RTI drafts being proposed variously by the Law Commission of Sri Lanka ad the Editors’ Guild of Sri Lanka and a draft being approved by the then Cabinet in 2004. This process of law reform has taken place on the basis that an RTI law is part of accepted democratic governance and is an essential component of the public right to know,” the letter said.

The Press Institute said the enactment (subject to accepted exceptions relation to national security) is necessary to maintain public scrutiny of government action and as a deterrent to corruption. “The Supreme Court in Sri Lanka has implied a right to information into existing constitutional provisions. However, considering the limited nature of these judicial initiatives, a separate enactment with properly defined rights and access procedures continues to be imperative”.

The latter also said the need was pointed out in the 2011 report of the Government’s own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission which observed that ‘freedom of expression and right to information, which are universally, regarded as basic human rights play a pivotal role in any reconciliation process.’ “As rightly pointed out by the LLRC, media freedom should be ‘enhanced in keeping with democratic principles and relevant fundamental rights obligations, since any restrictions placed on media freedom would only contribute to an environment of distrust and fear within and among ethnic groups,” the SLPI said.