Amend­ments to the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion and Cen­tral Bank Acts will place too much pow­er in­to the hands of gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, for­mer at­tor­ney Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj and MSJ po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­dul­lah warned yes­ter­day.

In a ra­dio in­ter­view, Ma­haraj said the amend­ments to the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) can change the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice in­to a place where ap­peals for in­for­ma­tion can be de­nied in­stead of one that will pro­vide the in­for­ma­tion re­quest­ed.

“I had been there for about five years in this pub­lic of­fice,” he said.

“An AG un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion is a very pow­er­ful fig­ure and where the pub­lic au­thor­i­ties know that this has to go to the AG, what will hap­pen over a pe­ri­od of time, in­stead of a cul­ture of giv­ing the in­for­ma­tion, it will be a cul­ture of not giv­ing, mak­ing de­ci­sions to refuse.

“Then you’re go­ing to have a bot­tle­neck at the AG’s Of­fice and then what­ev­er de­ci­sion he makes, even if it is a good de­ci­sion, a fair de­ci­sion, it will be thought that this re­fusal was po­lit­i­cal and what it will do, it will un­der­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in the op­er­a­tion of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act.”

Ab­dul­lah said the move will not im­prove T&T’s de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process but will do the op­po­site.

He said: “This, there­fore, rather than cre­at­ing more democ­ra­cy, is ac­tu­al­ly cen­tral­iz­ing pow­er in the hands of the AG and maybe by ex­ten­sion the Cab­i­net, be­cause the AG may de­cide to con­sult oth­er mem­bers of the Cab­i­net with re­spect to mak­ing de­ci­sions and there­fore you’re cen­tral­iz­ing pow­er rather than go­ing the op­po­site di­rec­tion.”

Ab­dul­lah added that mem­bers of the pub­lic might try to go “un­der­ground” to get the in­for­ma­tion that is re­quest­ed.

Ma­haraj agreed: “That is what used to hap­pen be­fore.”

He added: “When the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Bill was first pub­lished pri­or to 1999, it had that you first had to ap­ply to an in­for­ma­tion body, a coun­cil, and then you had to ap­peal to an in­for­ma­tion tri­bunal.

“When this went for pub­lic com­ment, apart from oth­er pro­vi­sions, the pub­lic ob­ject­ed to that be­cause they said it was cen­tral­iz­ing, it was get­ting min­is­ters in­volved and they did not want that, and the Bill had to be re­draft­ed in or­der to put it in the form it is put to­day, in or­der to in­su­late the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process from the politi­cian.”

Ma­haraj al­so warned that the changes to the Cen­tral Bank Act could cre­ate path­ways for po­lit­i­cal mis­han­dling.

“The Cen­tral Bank is sup­posed to op­er­ate in­de­pen­dent­ly and not to have the po­lit­i­cal ma­nip­u­la­tions and I think that is a se­ri­ous in­road in­to what can hap­pen,” he said.

“I’m un­der­stand­ing that Cen­tral Bank is go­ing to be a de­part­ment of the Min­istry of Fi­nance and that’s a se­ri­ous, se­ri­ous is­sue. If it be­comes a de­part­ment of the gov­ern­ment, then the min­is­ter in law has su­per­vi­so­ry pow­er over it and can de­ter­mine the pol­i­cy and every­thing else.”

Ab­dul­lah said there must a clear de­mar­ca­tion be­tween fis­cal and mon­e­tary pol­i­cy and said the pro­posed amend­ment in­ter­feres with that sep­a­ra­tion.

“The min­is­ter, of course, is re­spon­si­ble for fis­cal pol­i­cy which is tax­a­tion, rev­enues etc. Mon­e­tary pol­i­cy deals with the ex­change rate and in­ter­est rates and while there is dis­cus­sion be­tween the two, ul­ti­mate­ly the de­ci­sion about mon­e­tary pol­i­cy lies with the Cen­tral Bank and Gov­er­nors of the Cen­tral Bank,” he said.