OccupyGhana Declares ‘RTIRedFriday’ Campaign

Pressure group, OccupyGhana in collaboration with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) has launched a campaign dubbed “RTIRedFriday”.

The purpose is to begin a campaign against the delay in the passing of the Right to Information (RTI) Bill.

The campaign is expected to commence this Friday November 30, 2018.

This was made known in a statement issued yesterday by OccupyGhana.

The RTI Bill, which is expected to make information easily accessible by the media and Ghanaians to boost the fight against corruption, has been in legislation for well over 19 years now.

This is because successive governments have failed to implement it despite several assurances.

However, OccupyGhana believes the campaign will exert more pressure on government and parliament to pass this law.

Explaining the campaign to the The Publisher, the Media Relations Officer of the group, Nana Sarpong Agyeman-Badu said it is not a street demonstration but a social media campaign.

This according to him will be done together with the media coalition on RTI.

“We are urging people to be in a red attire and post pictures on social media with the hashtag RTIRedFriday,” he said.

According to OccupyGhana, the inexcusably long delay to pass the law suggests that “governments are simply afraid to pass a law that will help actualize a right that the Constitution has already given to Ghanaians.”

The pressure group expects that the Bill, when passed into law, will set out clear parameters and instances where the government will exercise public interest privilege (Privilege that allows government to refuse the disclosure of a document or information which is against the public interest.)

“The current wide-bound interpretation of the government on this privilege is, in our view, the greatest substantive and procedural hurdle to the full realization of the right to information. Any law that does not deal with this matter in a manner that eases the right to information would be worthless and not have been worth the wait.”

The law, according to the group, should ensure that any doubts as to whether there is such a privilege be resolved in favor or granting, rather than withholding such information.

By: Emmanuel Yeboah Britwum