Dear All, I came across an article on ACCESS TO INFORMATION AND TRANSPARENCY IN MÉXICO which I felt like sharing with the forum. The news is old, and I apologize, if it has already been circulated on the forum.
Allan R. Brewer-Carías Professor, Central University of Venezuela 1. I began to write this presentation during the days of the Inauguration of President Barack Obama, and as I was asked by John Ackerman to refer in a comparative perspective to the matter of access to information and transparency in Mexico, I thought that it would be interesting to highlight what a new President in the U.S. was proposing on the subject. And effectively, on his first day in office last month (February 21, 2009), President Obama said, referring to the Government, that For a long time now, there has been too much secrecy in this city, expressing that on the contrary, Transparency and rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency. He then ordered that: Starting today every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known. 2. For such purposes that same day he issued two presidential Memoranda, one on the Freedom of In-formation Act, and the other on Transparency and Open Government. Quoting Justice Louis Brandeis who referred to the SUNLIGHT as THE BEST OF DISINFECTANTS, Obama ordered the Freedom of Information Act to be administered with a clear presumption in favor of disclosure, in the sense that in the face of doubt, openness prevails, so in general, The Government should not keep information confidential. In the second Memorandum, the President affirmed that his Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government considering that openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government, adding that: Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. 3. This whole concept of transparency in Government responds to the political idea of the the crystal house image (la maison de verre), that after so many years of opacity began to be developed, associated with the symbolism of the visible and accessible, in contrast to what is closed, mysterious, inaccessible or inexplicable; being transparency related to the sense of tranquility and serenity that results from what can be dominated or rationalized, in contrast to the anguish and perturbation caused by what is mysterious or unknown. 4. This concept of transparency has been one of the key elements that in the evolution of Public Administration has helped the transformation of the traditional Bureaucratic State into the current Democratic Administrative State of our times, more devoted to citizens than to the King or to the bureaucracy. That Bureaucratic State was the one characterized by Max Weber as an organization seeking to increase the professional knowledge superiority of public officials precisely by means of secret and of the secrecy of their intentions. 1. Paper written for comments in the Conference on Challenges to State Reform in Mexico: Transparency, Elections & criminal Justice, organized by the Institute of Latin American Studies, Columbia University and Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Columbia University, New York, 19-20 January, 2009. 2. Speech at the swearing-in ceremony for Senior Officials of the Executive Office, February 21, 2009. See the report of Sheryl Gay Stolberg On First Day, Obama Quickly Sets a New Tone, The New York Times, February 22, 2009, p. A1 3. January 21, 2009. Presidencial Memoranda, in www.whitehouse.gov 4. Jaime Rodríguez-Arana, La transparencia en la Administración Pública, in Revista Vasca de Administración Pública, n° 42, Oñati 1995, p. 452 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
