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The right to know

There has been a stony silence from government on the subject of using the Official Secrets Act enacted in the early fifties to stifle publication of cabinet proceedings in the press. An official committee of two secretaries of ministries and the attorney general has been appointed to examine the law and presumably a government decision will follow - unless the protests that are now mounting will not be like playing the proverbial violin to a deaf elephant.

The stubborn fact is that governments resort to such measures not for the national good but for political expediency and self-protection. Nobody will quarrel with the proposition that matters that endanger national security, such as for example any planned military offensive against the Tiger terrorists, must remain secret. The press in this country has never irresponsibly published such material that benefits the enemy. But why should not a spat in the cabinet between two ministers, and these are not uncommon, be reported?

Why should cabinet memoranda involving expenditure of public funds be kept secret?

Cabinet news has been published in various ways for as long as cabinets and the press existed. Confidentiality in these matters is the duty of the ministers and the official guardians of cabinet papers and minutes. A literate and well informed population like ours is only too well aware that when cabinet leaks occur, and they are not uncommon, the source of the leak is political and not official.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga has been embarrassed by many cabinet leaks during the five years since she assumed office. In fact she once went as far as calling one of her ministers the ``reporter’’ because he was suspected of being the source of several leaks. Various ministers were suspect at different times and the president, no doubt tongue in cheek, once went as far as say that the cabinet room should be equipped with a press gallery and the proceedings should be public!

There are very good reasons why many matters that go before the cabinet should be kept out of the public domain. But there are equally good reasons, such as transparency and the people’s right to know, why many of these matters should be made public. The government, not just this one but any government, should not be permitted to use outdated laws like the Official Secrets Act for political convenience and keep matters that would embarrass it one way or another confidential. That is the best way of engaging in shady deals that will not bear public scrutiny.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who is the finance minister, has had no problem keeping the annual budget proposals secret until they are formally unveiled in parliament by Prof. G.L. Pieris, the deputy minister of finance. That is because she herself and the various officials involved in budget making are very well aware of their duties and responsibilities and know how to conduct themselves. It is traditional for the ministers to be briefed on the budget proposals only on Budget Day itself - a tradition that has emerged over time out of the knowledge that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to keep anything secret if too many are privy to the information.

There have been times when even the budget proposals have leaked. A former editor of this newspaper was prosecuted over one such episode when Mr. Ronnie de Mel was the finance minister. The press version of that story is that Mr. de Mel hurriedly changed some proposals to show the world that there had been no leak following a publication of some of the proposals on budget morning. But that did not stop the CID bloodhounds being set on the editor concerned who cheekily told them that the minister himself had given him the story! No wonder then that bell, book and candle were thrown at him and he was duly produced in a Colombo Magistrate’s court.

That whole business fizzled out in time. There have been other efforts, resisted by the press, of attempting to extract sources of information. It is a first principle of journalism that news sources are kept confidential and no editor or reporter worth his salt will ever betray a source. It is always best that published information is properly attributed so that the reader (or listener or viewer as the case may be) can make his/her own judgement on the news that is presented. But there are many occasions when sources do not wish to be identified and reporters often state that fact in their stories.

Politicians, often supported by sycophantic bureaucrats, have an unfortunate tendency of using laws for self-serving purposes. We have in this country too often seen the criminal defamation law that many argue should be struck off the statute altogether being so used. Who can forget that one and only parliamentary trial we’ve had of two journalists over the triviality of mixed captions? Thankfully such circuses have not been repeated, but as long as the law remains in the statute, as in the case of the Official Secrets Act, there will be those who will seek to use it for their own purposes.

This government made various promises of enhancing the freedom of the press when it went before the electors. Many of these have not been kept and even ministers have to be pointedly corrected when they boast about the freedom they have ``given.’’ Such freedom is not theirs to give. It is the people’s right to know. Let not considerations of convenience and expediency influence the government to press on with a prohibition on the publication of cabinet news. Preventing leaks is the business of the head of the government. Searching them out is the business of the press.

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