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CHILE:
Guaranteeing that
Public Documents Are Indeed
Public
María
Cecilia Espinosa
SANTIAGO, (IPS) - Civil
society groups are pushing for a
broader, more effective law
guaranteeing public access to
official documents in Chile, a
country that performs well in
surveys on corruption, but fared
poorly in a recent study on
transparency, due to what
activists describe as a ”culture
of secrecy”.
The non-governmental
organisation Pro Acceso (to
Public Information) and other
citizen groups are seeking the
expansion of a bill on access to
information introduced by
senators Hernán Larraín, of the
right-wing Independent
Democratic Union, an opposition
party, and Jaime Gazmuri of the
Socialist Party, which forms
part of the governing
centre-left coalition.
The bill would replace Chile's
public information law, which
was passed in 1999, and has
proven ineffective, according to
activists.
But while the bill sponsored by
Larraín and Gazmuri would make
all matters of state
administration public property,
it does not include legislative
and judicial documents.
Pro Acceso and other groups are
thus seeking to extend the reach
of the bill to legislative and
judicial information, as well as
documents in the hands of
companies in which the state
holds an interest and contracts
between private firms and the
state.
In addition, the groups propose
the creation of an independent
body in charge of defending the
public right to information.
Lawyer Juan Pablo Olmedo,
president of Pro Acceso, told
IPS that the aim is to ”foment a
culture of transparency.” He
said the groups have studied the
”sunshine laws” of Mexico,
Britain, New Zealand and
Australia to draw up their
proposal.
In 1999, Chile's public
information law established the
right of all citizens to ask any
public agency for information
without having to identify
themselves or explain their
reason for requesting the
document.
But the law has been
ineffective, say the citizen
groups, largely because a
government decree handed down in
2001 gave public bodies leeway
to classify specific documents
as secret or confidential.
And since then, a number of
government ministries, municipal
governments and other public
entities have issued their own
resolutions that have further
restricted the public's right to
know.
Olmedo underlined that the 1999
law established, for the first
time, the right of access to
public information, while
creating administrative and
judicial procedures to protect
the exercise of that right.
But, he said, government
agencies have taken advantage of
the 2001 decree and other
loopholes to keep alive Chile's
”tradition of secrecy.”
The activist called for a
”radical change” in Chile's
bureaucratic system.
Under the bill introduced by
Larraín and Gazmuri, all public
information that does not
involve national security would
have to be provided within 10
working days of the request,
although a 10-day extension of
the deadline would be possible
in exceptional cases.
Failure to comply would be
punishable by fines for both the
institution and the public
employee involved, and the
person who had unsuccessfully
requested the information would
be able to go to court to sue
the public agency or the
official in question.
Nevertheless, Olmedo said the
bill falls short ”because a
greater stimulus is needed to
eradicate the culture of
secrecy,” including new
institutions that would
”actively promote a culture of
transparency.”
Andrea Fernández, communications
officer in the Chilean chapter
of the anti-corruption watchdog
Transparency International, told
IPS that in Chile ”the problem
is not so much corruption but a
secretive culture which does not
recognise that public
transparency can only exist when
any citizen is truly able to
find out how the public
authorities are functioning and
what forms the basis of their
decisions, which affect the
entire country.”
”A modern, competitive and
democratic society is based on
transparency,” she stressed.
”Without information, there can
be no real participation and
democ racy.”
In Transparency International's
reports, Chile has consistently
ranked among the ”cleanest”
countries in Latin America.
However, it did not do so well
in a comparative study on access
to public information carried
out by the Chilean
non-governmental organisation
Corporación Participa and the
New York-based Open Society
Institute.
The study, which compared the
situation in Chile with the
transparency found in Argentina,
Armenia, Bulgaria, France,
Macedonia, Peru, Romania, South
Africa and Spain, noted that the
proportion of access to
information requests that were
turned down was 69 percent in
Chile, 63 percent in South
Africa, and 62 percent in Spain.
In the study, a broad range of
volunteers in Chile presented a
total of 140 requests of varied
gradations of sensitivity for
information from government
ministries, judicial
institutions, municipal
governments and private
companies that provide public
services.
Olmedo said he was not surprised
by the results, which merely
confirmed what he himself had
been complaining about for so
long.
But he said the study, which was
conducted by highly respected
organisations, should help lead
to steps that would move Chile
”from a tradition of secrecy to
a culture of transparency.”
For her part, Fernández pointed
out that the countries that
performed the worst - Chile,
South Africa and Spain - have
all emerged from authoritarian
regimes in which ”a culture of
fear and repression took strong
root.”
”Our democracies in Latin
America are still fragile, among
other things because of the gap
between the state and civil
society,” said the activist.
”There is a lingering mistrust
among the citizens with respect
to the public administration,
and very little oversight and
monitoring.”
Among the hurdles standing in
the way of the public's right to
know in Chile, Transparency
International points to the lack
of training for public
employees, a shortage of funds,
and confusion among public
agencies or officials as to who
should determine when to release
certain information to the
public or when to deny
information that has been
requested.
”Public officials feel that
information belongs to them, and
they see sharing it as taking a
risk, because they could do
something wrong, or the
information that they released
could be misused by the person
requesting it,” the executive
director of Corporación
Participa, Andrea Sanhueza,
commented to IPS.
In her view, one thing that is
”essential to strengthening
democracy is a transparent state
that is held accountable for its
actions and understands that it
is at the service of the
citizens, and that when it comes
down to it, the citizens are the
bosses, and not vice versa.”
”We have to get involved in
matters of public interest and
have access to information in
areas that concern us, whether
that means the evaluation of the
teachers in our children's
schools or information about the
contract with the company that
collects the garbage in our
neighbourhood,” she argued.
Access to information translates
into ”well-informed opinions,
which allow us to get involved
more effectively, with a greater
political and social impact,”
concluded Sanhueza. |
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