Legislators in the Bahamas could table freedom-of-information legislation as soon as next month, the country’s Tribune newspaper reported last week.
Bahamas Education Minister Jerome Fitzgerald told reporters on Sept. 6 that the country’s Freedom of Information Committee has finished drafting the legislation, and that the bill should be before Cabinet within the next two weeks, according to the Tribune.
“I received the report with the recommendations from them a week before last,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “I’m now preparing a Cabinet paper for their recommendations to come to Cabinet to see with regard to the recommendations for the changes in the Act which ones will be accepted and which ones will not be accepted.”
The Tribune reported that one of the main drivers of the legislation has been the country’s Organisation for Responsible Government, which has made recommendationsthat would limit interference from government officials and increase transparency in government matters.
“Freedom of information is the first critical step to the correction of a massive number of serious government ailments that are undermining the stability of the Bahamian government and the Bahamas,” ORG Director Matthew Aubry said. “These ills will only be combated by the enactment of a highly respected and effective Freedom of Information Act.”
According to the Tribune, a FOIA was passed in the Bahamas in 2012, but no date was ever set for its implementation.
When governments changed that year, the Tribune reported, the newly elected officials said the law needed major changes.
If the law is enacted, the Bahamas would join the more than 100 jurisdictions around the world that have some form of freedom-of-information law.
In the Caribbean region, those jurisdictions include the Cayman Islands, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad, Jamaica, Brazil and Colombia— but not the Virgin Islands.
Here, the Law Reform Commission drafted and recommended the passage of an FOI Act in 2004, but it has yet to be tabled in the House of Assembly in spite of legislators’ repeated promises.
Reporters regularly ask Premier Dr. Orlando Smith if his administration intends to implement freedom-of-information legislation here, but the premier has given no indication that the move is on his list of priorities.
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