Need to know vs Right to know

THE FREEDOM of Information bill recently passed the Senate on Third Reading and moved on to the House of Representatives for concurrence. This early, I want to put the bill to a test, just to know in some detail what the advocates have been giving all-out support to.

I would like to use for this purpose an online piece written several months back by the eminent Constitutionalist Fr. Joaquin Bernas S. J. on precisely the same topic.

Fr. Bernas contends that the people’s right to be informed has been adequately served by laws and jurisprudence that we already have in place. So, he writes, the “question that should be asked is what the Freedom of Information bill hopes to add.” I take this as my focus question.

What we have, first and foremost, is a Constitutional item, in the Bill of Rights, that guarantees our right to information. It says: Continue>>>
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