Time for the Freedom of Information Act to come into operation

Tue, May 8. 2012

World Press Freedom Day, which was celebrated last Thursday, went by virtually unnoticed here in St Vincent and the Grenadines.

May 3 was proclaimed World Press Freedom Day by the UN General Assembly in 1993, following a Recommendation adopted at the twenty-sixth session of UNESCO’s General Conference in 1991.{{more}}

The day serves as an occasion to inform citizens of violations of press freedom – a reminder that in dozens of countries around the world, publications are censored, fined, suspended and closed down, while journalists, editors and publishers are harassed, attacked, detained and even murdered.

It is a date to encourage and develop initiatives in favour of press freedom, and to assess the state of press freedom worldwide.

The day probably went by unnoticed in SVG, because on the world stage, we are ranked among the freest countries when it comes to press freedom.

Last year, SVG was ranked 17th among 196 countries by Freedom House in the Global Press Freedom Rankings. We were second only to St Lucia in the Americas, beating out even the United States, Barbados, Jamaica and Canada.

We, no doubt, earned the ranking because this country can boast of having three privately run independent newspapers, each with its own editorial style and policy, eleven radio stations, many of whom have call in radio programmes on which citizens express themselves on a wide variety of topics, two privately run television stations, a prime minister who is easily accessible to the media and holds press conferences usually more than once a month, and a high level of Internet penetration, which allows residents access to new media, including social networking sites such as Facebook.

Despite these gains, we still have much further to go. There is still a reluctance on the part of some public officials to provide information on matters of public interest and the constant threat of litigation encourages self-censorship and discourages investigative reporting.

Also, far too many people still express real or imagined fear of expressing genuine opinions on matters of national interest. Those who openly express themselves, either in the print media or on the radio call in shows, are few in number.

World Press Freedom Day is also a day when governments should be reminded of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom.

This is, therefore, as good a time as any to call again on our government to operationalize the Freedom of Information Act, which was passed into law since 2003. One cannot fathom why a government, which boasts of being open and transparent, would go through the trouble of enacting such legislation, then fail to appoint the day when the legislation will come into effect.

Additionally, we call on government to pass other legislation, critical for the enhancement of free expression, such as Integrity in Public Life Legislation, Campaign Financing Laws, and the abolition of Criminal Libel and Defamation Laws.