Scorpenes graft: Official Secrets Act must make way for Freedom of Information

Published by Malaysia Chronicle on 31 July 2011. By Maclean Patrick.

The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act is indeed a step in the right way for a government to be transparent and accountable to the people it serves. It allows the people of a nation to have knowledge on the dealings of the government it has installed to look into its welfare.

Yet in Malaysia, the Official Secrets Act (OSA) may go head to head with the proposed FOI Act. The Official Secrets Act (OSA) passed in 1972 states, “any document specified in the schedule and any information and material relating thereto and includes any other official document, information, and material as may be classified as ‘Top Secret’, ‘Confidential’, ‘Secret’, or ‘Restricted’, as the case may be, by a minister, the Menteri Besar or Chief Minister of a state or such public officer appointed under section 2B”.

In 1983, a provision was added to the OSA that makes it an offense to not report anyone seeking official Information. If charged for not reporting foul play, the accused will face an $8600 fine and/or a 5-year prison sentence.

Under the OSA, the government can classify any document as “Secret” and this is a point of contention for the FOI Act. By implementing the FOI Act, the provision that allows this has to be removed and replaced with instead by a list of documents that can be classified secret.

The Schedule to the Act covers "Cabinet documents, records of decisions and deliberations including those of Cabinet committees", as well as similar documents for state executive councils. It also includes "documents concerning national security, defence and international relations"

Over the years the OSA has been used against bloggers, public documents such as toll concessionaires, water rates by a private water utility and a 433-page report of recommendations on how to fix the police force.

It is because the OSA is open to abuse by those in power, that it either has to be abolished or redesigned to allow for greater transparency and with a better classification to what can and cannot be considered state secret. With this the FOI Act can work, allowing the general public access to what and how the government is using public funds and to how the decisions came about.

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