Sri Lanka’s Proposed RTI Guarantee Needs To Be Strengthened: Centre For Law And Democracy

April 20, 2015

While welcoming the Sri Lankan government’s proposed right to information (RTI) law and constitutional amendments, in an analysis released today by the Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD), suggests that the proposed constitutional guarantee needs to be strengthened.

Toby Mendel

“Although it is a late-comer to right to information (RTI), the fact that the Sri Lankan government is moving forward simultaneously with both a constitutional guarantee and legislation is very encouraging”, said Toby Mendel, Executive Director of CLD. “It would be a great shame if this clear demonstration of democratic political will were undermined by rules that failed to conform to international standards.”

Key problems with the proposed constitutional guarantees for RTI, identified in CLD’s analysis, including the following:

• It contains an excessively long and broad list of grounds which may justify secrecy, including contempt of court, Parliamentary privilege and “preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence”.
• Amendments proposed by the Attorney General seek to limit the scope of the guarantee to whatever happens to be set out in law.
• The scope of the right is limited to an unduly narrow range of public authorities.

We publish below the analysis in full;

This Note¹ contains the Centre for Law and Democracy’s (CLD) comments on those parts of the Bill entitled “An Act to amend the Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka” – “19th Amendment to the Constitution” which are concerned with the right to information (proposed guarantee).² The comments in this Note are based on the version of the proposed guarantee which was published online by the Colombo Telegraph, which includes the amendments proposed by the Attorney General.³ This version of the proposed guarantee is attached as an Annex to this Note.                      Read More