Review panel ‘temporary victory’

The following article was published online by Sowetan

The Protection of Information Bill was back in the spotlight in Parliament yesterday, with the focus on a new panel that will have the power to decide if information has been wrongly classified.

The proposed law – dubbed the “secrecy” bill – has been widely criticised for giving the state wide powers to classify information, and for punishing people who publish that information, even if it is in the public interest.

Last month, after Cosatu threatened to challenge the Bill in the Constitutional Court, the ANC agreed to restrict the power to classify information to state security agencies.

Initially about 1000 organs of state, from ministries to public museums, would have been given the right to classify information as secret, but now only security organs may do this.

The parties have agreed that the bill should include a new Classification Review Panel of five people to be appointed by the state security minister to oversee classified information.

No political party leaders or officials will be allowed to sit on the panel, which will have binding powers to instruct organs of state to declassify information if it believes the information should not be made secret.

Nkwame Cedile, Western Cape coordinator of the Right2Know campaign, which held a picket of about 30 people outside Parliament yesterday, said the review panel agreement was a temporary victory for them.

DA MP Dene Smuts and African Christian Democratic Party MP Steve Swart insisted that the panel’s decisions should be binding.

ANC MP Llewellyn Landers said the ANC wanted to increase the penalties in the Bill for those who misused classification to cover up wrongdoing.

But Cedile said it was likely that if the Bill were passed, there would still be organs of state that could classify information to cover up fraud and corruption, even if they knew they might face penalties because of it.

Rhodes University journalism professor Jane Duncan said last month that even with the new concessions, it would be “extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to ensure transparency of the most shadowy of all state structures, the security cluster”.

Source: Sowetan