One step forward, two steps back?

Along with hundreds of other countries, Sri Lanka marked the International Right to Know Day last Thursday (28th), but with a marked difference. This year, the looming shadow of a so-called Online Safety Bill hangs over the nation. Critics say that its objective is not fair regulation but rather to confer a government-appointed body with unchecked powers to carry out arbitrary crackdowns using a wide raft of vaguely drafted offences carrying stiff penalties. This, they argue, will potentially ‘chill’ even the legitimate use of online spaces.

These are far from reassuring developments. President Ranil Wickremesinghe played a key role in the overhaul of Sri Lanka’s antiquated media laws, particularly in enacting a long-awaited Right to Information Act (2016) to generous international plaudits. Since then, Sri Lankans have vigorously used the RTI Act probably to the astonishment of the House which gave its unanimous assent to the Bill.

RTI use, even in far-flung corners of the land, has ranged from challenging corrupt practices from municipal to local level and ensuring adherence to environmental safeguards in mega projects to making the police accountable for using expired tear gas canisters. The Right to Information Commission has taken on an encouragingly pro-information, pro-citizen role as an independent arbiter of the public interest.

Even so, challenges remain. The transition from a ‘closed’ public service riddled with corruption to an RTI-based governance culture is very much a work in progress. Recent reports have found that the record of voluntary information disclosure by key Ministries, particularly in regard to procurement matters, is far from satisfactory. Sri Lanka is not unique in this respect; that performance is poor in South Asia and beyond.

Bad practices must be rectified, and the nodal agency (the Media Ministry) must pull up its socks and get its slumbering RTI Unit to wake up. A transparency portal in which all procurement and project information of relevant Ministries, at the central and provincial level, is carried, would be a good start. The Office of the President, the Wildlife, Public Administration and Agriculture Ministries are among the more pro-active. The rest fall way behind. This would also signal the Government’s ‘good faith’ in the debt restructuring process and rocky negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The Government must also refrain from enacting new laws overriding the RTI Act and setting back gains of the past few years. Moreover, it was under a Wickremesinghe administration that the country repealed criminal defamation laws more than two decades ago. So, is the President aware that the Online Safety Bill brings criminal defamation through the back door by criminalising the ‘wilful’ making or communicating of a ‘statement of fact’ intending to ‘harass’ a person? ‘Harassment’ is defined as, inter alia, publishing anything that ‘violates a person’s dignity’. Surely, an offence of ‘protecting the dignity’ reads as painfully outdated in today’s world?

Repression breeds further repression, the ‘stifling of democratic opinion’ today will lead to ‘catastrophic violence’ tomorrow, as the Supreme Court has warned in the past. The Government may be advised to heed that sensible advice.