We need to have the facts

By R. Nadeswaran, The Sun

While Penang and Selangor are enacting their own Freedom of Information Act, the question to be asked is: Why is everyone so afraid to reveal basic information like expenditure, purchases and travel expenses? Is there a need to classify every document as a secret? If there has been no wrongdoing, what’s the purpose of all that hiding?

AT the Summer School at London City University’s Centre for Investigative Journalism two years ago, there was a side-attraction for two of its Malaysian participants. Terence Fernandez and I were mesmerised by a murder trial which provided some gory details of the lifestyle of young Asian immigrants, and above all, one of the accused was a young Malaysian.

What was presented to the jury were details of an orgy of drugs and sex but when it was reported that a young Malaysian and her boyfriend had cut the body of the victim and dumped the parts into the Thames, it became more intriguing. Having left London and returned home, it was reported in late August 2008 that Noor Azura Mohd Yusoff was found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Returning to London in September, the gory details were still in our minds and we wondered aloud if there were other Malaysians in British slammers for similar or other offences. "How do I get details?" was the poser to the British journalist. "Call up the Ministry of Justice, speak to anyone and its media unit and if they refuse, invoke the Freedom of Information Act."

The phone calls were made and I was politely told to file an application for details. A simple written application identifying the applicant’s name, occupation and purpose for the same would suffice. Off went the email on Nov 9 and a day later the reply arrived. It said: "Thank you for your correspondence of November 9, 2010, in which you asked for information relating to Malaysian nationals in UK prisons under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). You will receive a response from us by December 6, 2010. Your request has been passed to the appropriate business unit within the MoJ, and they will write to you with their decision by this date."

However, the reply also stated that if the information requested is covered by a qualified exemption(s) under the Act, the department is allowed to take longer than 20 working days to respond. It said: "This is because in such circumstances we are required to consider the public interest issues when deciding whether or not to disclose the information requested. If more time is needed to consider the public interest issues under a qualified exemption(s), we will write to you and inform you of the revised date you can expect to receive a response to your request."

Less than two weeks later, the details arrived via email. There’s no such thing as "sulit" or "terhad" because such details are no security risk to the prison system or the country.

This writer had been pre-warned not to compare the systems in Malaysia and the UK because there would be disillusionment all the way, but as a matter of public interest, why are non-sensitive issues being kept away from our public domain? When we ask civil servants as to whether they are entitled to have personal bodyguards, they avoid you like the plague and run upstairs for cover. When you ask ministers to give a breakdown of expenses, some think that the details are "national secrets" and better kept to themselves. A simple question to the head of a local council as to whether there was a quorum at a meeting which approved a development plan is met with stares with the words "semua maklumat adalah sulit dan rahsia"! Would such information cause a national catastrophe if it fell into the hands of our enemies? But no, some of our civil servants use the Official Secrets Act to camouflage and mask their shortcomings.

While Penang and Selangor are enacting their own Freedom of Information Act, the question to be asked is: Why is everyone so afraid to reveal basic information like expenditure, purchases and travel expenses? Is there a need to classify every document as a secret? If there has been no wrongdoing, what’s the purpose of all that hiding?