Ex President John Agyekum Kufuor has asked government to review clauses of the controversial Right to Information bill in the interest of the Ghana’s national security.
Ex president Kufuor said, “The real challenge is not government refusing to pass the bill. But the text of the Bill has not been revisited enough to offer guarantees to information that are of security and stability concerns to the integrity of the nation itself.
Speaking at the University of Professional Studies in Accra Wednesday, the former president said: “This Bill must be passed to achieve better governance, Yes. But it must not be at the cost of security and stability of the nation,”
The Media Coalition on Right to Information (RTI) has described as “disappointing” parliament’s inability to have the much- anticipated bill passed before rising for the Christmas break.
The group have bemoaned the lack of urgency in getting the bill passed as they blame parliamentarians for showing no or little interest in passing the over decade old bill.
This comes after the minister for parliamentary affairs and majority leader in parliament indicated that if the bill was not passed before the end of the session, it would definitely do so in the first two weeks of the next session.
“The bill has suffered sequential abortions, but like ‘Abeku’, it refuses to die. Parliament is resolved to pass the RTI Bill,” he said at a Dialogue with Civil Society Organisations’ programme.
For close to two decades, Ghana’s parliament has failed to pass the bill into law despite advocacy by the media and civil society organisations for its passage. Many citizens are of the opinion that, political will is low on securing maximum interest to get the bill pass. Both the majority and minority have been blamed for their unwillingness to get the bill passed.
