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"id": 238482,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Muite",
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"legal_name": "Paul Kibugi Muite",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to start by thanking the Member for Kisumu Rural for his initiative to seek leave of the House to introduce the proposed Bill. This is something that should have been done a long time ago. Governments the world over have one common trait. That common trait is to control the free flow of information. Practising dictatorship is easier than practising democracy. Therefore, if you want to be dictatorial, you deny people information. So, it is not reasonable to expect that the Government can come up with a suitable Freedom of Information Bill. Its doing that will be going against the grain. Therefore, it is very appropriate that a Bill of this nature should be sponsored as a private Member's Bill to ensure that its contents will accord with the objectives of making it easy to access information. I have seen a Bill that has been generated by the Government. Although it pretends to give access to information, in fact, it does the opposite. It proposes to control free flow of information. This is why the Government has tried to generate its own Bill. Information is critical. The first thing we should do when leave to introduce the proposed Bill is granted is to repeal the Official Secrets Act. I believe that we will have the numbers to grant the leave. We are now living in an age of transparency. The Government needs to be transparent. We need to repeal the Official Secrets Act, which is used as an instrument of oppression and cover up of shortcomings. All of us have to be transparent. Among the major beneficiaries of the freedom of information will, of course, be the media, the civil society and individual citizens. Today, even mundane information like wanting to know how much money the Ministry of Agriculture has allocated to Kabete Constituency is a difficult task. We want to access this information as individuals, civil society and the media. It is unreasonable to oppose or object to this Motion. When leave is granted, we will need to ensure that the contents of the proposed Bill will grant legal rights to information. The House Committee on the Administration of Justice and Legal Affairs recently visited the State of New York. We learnt that this State has a commendable Freedom of Information Act. We were able to meet the Commissioner in charge of this matter. People go to this Commissioner to present their complaints. Individuals and the media go to the Commissioner and report which information they have sought from a government department and have been denied access to it. Individuals and the media go there and say: \"We want this particular information. We have gone to this government department but we have been denied access to this information.\", and he orders that, that information be made available. It is a very effective tool. That is what we want. If, indeed, we want to fight corruption, a Freedom of Information Bill must be enacted into an Act of Parliament. That is the only way we can ensure that people will no longer conduct clandestine activities in the knowledge that they will cover up this information. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we do not want leakages. We want accurate information to be accessible to the media, individuals and civil society. That is why even our own Standing Orders - I am glad that we are reviewing them - are behind times. How can we conduct hearings of Committees in camera? What are we hiding? It is only those who have got things to hide who object to these things. Why would anybody want to say: \"Receive evidence about the Artur brothers in camera\"? Not unless the Government has got something to hide. So, these are cobwebs that we must sweep out. Let us enact this Bill, so that we become transparent. The Government, its Ministers, Permanent Secretaries and other public officers will be transparent if there is nothing to hide. Obviously, there will be mechanisms for regulation in matters to do with defence and morals. Those are areas which can be regulated. There would have October 18, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 2991 to be very good reasons for not giving access to certain aspects of the matter. However, we should not confuse individual personal interests of a Minister, or even that of the President, with public interest. The public interest is the interest of all of us as Kenyan people, and not the political interests of the government of the day. Sometimes, the political interest of the government of the day can, and do, indeed, run contrary to public interest. What is now normally called \"public interest\" is, in fact, the political interest of particular individuals within government. How else do you justify a raid in the middle of the night on a media house? What public interest are you protecting? Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we must grant leave for the introduction of this Bill and subject its contents to public debate. The civil society should be let to debate the Bill and make their own contribution. The media and the Kenyan people should also give their views, so that we can enact the Bill as quickly as possible. If we wait for the Government to enact this Bill, we will wait until the cows go home. With those remarks, I beg to support."
}