Earlier on we showed you the fiery debate over the Referendum Amendment Bill which was taken to the House today. But that was only one of 7 bills presented for second and third readings, fortunately none of the others were quite as contentious. But sparks did fly with the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill. It reduces the number of exempt categories for government documents and eliminates secrecy provisions in public contracts. And talking about secret public contracts, attention was again directed to the member for Fort George, Said Musa who was especially isolated because the PUP actually supported the bill.
Hon. Dean Barrow,
“This bill as I indicated on the earlier occasion arises in direct consequence, I don’t want to, let me just say in direct consequence of the various contracts signed by the ex-Prime Minister starting with the UHS loan guarantee that contained provisions designed, not just to conceal these contracts – worthless, nefarious, pernicious contracts – not just designed to conceal them from the Belizean people but to ensure that no matter how hard the Belizean people tried, even if they got wind of the contracts, they would be prevented from ever seeing the terms and conditions. I want to see what he will have to say on this.”
Rt. Hon. Said Musa,
“The bill that he is amending is a law which he and his party passed back in 1994. It is the UDP government that passed this Freedom of Information law in 1994. It is the UDP government at the time, when he was the Attorney General and Minister of everything else, that passed a law that restricted the public’s right to access documents to which secrecy provisions allied.”
Hon. Dean Barrow,
“The old Freedom of Information Act as the Member for Mesop, as the Minister of Housing has said, contains shortcomings that the list of exempt documents, the documents that the civil servants could deny access to was far too great. But nowhere in the current Freedom of Information Act was any permission given, any urging given to any administration to be signing these injurious contracts and inserting in them express provisions that said the Belizean people were to be denied sight of them.”
Hon. Mark Espat,
“Mr. Speaker I feel compelled to go on record stating my support for this initiative and to do so emphatically as our party did in its release earlier this week, given the vocal and almost unanimous clamor of the Belizean people in recent years on the issue of public access to contracts and documents signed on their behalf by public officials. The bill proposes to prohibit any confidentiality clause in public contracts and other documents and to prescribe specific punishment for any public official that refuses to provide access to such a document.”
Hon. Johnny Briceno,
“The PUP does support the amendments that are being proposed here in this Honorable House, it is important for the records. Mr. Speaker this again is just another step in the maturity of our democracy. There’s always room to do more.”
Hon. Dean Barrow,
“And so when the member for Albert and the Leader of the Opposition support the legislation, they are thereby in my view implicitly condemning, not the mischief – I was going to say the mischief but that is far too weak a word. They are therefore condemning the evil that was done in terms of the secrecy provisions in those accommodation agreements that I spoke about. So I just want to make the point for the member for Fort George that he stands condemned by his own party because anybody with any sense must condemn what he did as Prime Minister.”
