“The Best Christmas gift we can
give to Filipinos is the passage of the FOI!”
Senate minority leader Alan Peter
Cayetano called on the government to enact the Freedom of Information (FOI) in
order to help President Aquino curb graft and corruption in the country.
He made the appeal in his sponsorship
speech for Senate Bill 3208 last Tuesday.
He said the FOI would help remove the
power of government information from a few and give it to the public and help
eliminating monopolies in the market, anomalies in the construction of
infrastructure, and other similar activities that take away the ordinary
Filipino’s ability to earn his living.
“By enacting the Freedom of Information Act, we help empower our
people to find the solution to these problems and to finally create the change
that will make a difference in their lives. It provides the mechanism to
disperse power among the people. As such, each and every Filipino can become a
graft buster,” he said.
The senator stressed that in a time
when PiTiK – Mataas na Presyo,
Kawalan o Kakulangan ng Trabaho at Kulang o Maliit na Kita – is plaguing our country, the FOI is
needed more than ever.
“We have been paying a high price for
the absence of the FOI bill. In fact, a World Bank study is much quoted has
having found that for everyone peso that the government collects, 40 centavos
goes to corruption. Also, the Department of Finance and Annual pegged its tax
leakage P240 billion. That’s money lost instead of used to help uplift the
lives of Filipinos,” he said.
He explained that in a time when
information is power, it becomes the government’s responsibility to empower its
citizenry and enable them to take an active part in fortifying this country’s
defenses against graft and corruption through the passage of the FOI bill.
“Democracy is all about people making decisions. Through the
enactment of the FOI bill, every Filipino can be true partners of the
government in establishing a system that is truly clean, bent to serve and is
accountable to the public it serves,” he said.
