The Freedom of Information Act that we have in place, as has been said about our Constitution of late, is a great thing in the right hands and it is an anti-democratic tool when it is in the wrong hands.

And at the end of the day, it is all about how the fine print is utilised. It can give the government and an absolute, unfettered freedom to withhold information at will, information which should be made public. But at the same time it is a nice stack of papers to wave around at international fora to prove what an open, transparent and accountable government we have in this country.

For that is really and truly what it is all about, having a fine piece of legislation to show the people such as those at the Council of Europe, the United Nations or the European Parliament but, in reality, the ground rule of the day is to deny, deny and deny information practically whenever it is asked for.

And it is usually on the grounds of commercial sensitivity of its own business partners or on pedantic technicalities, which more often than not are used to deny information which any open, accountable and transparent ministry should be giving to the media in the first place without forcing them to resort to the legal channel that is the FOI Act.

The Freedom of Information Act of 2008 was last revised in 2012, before this administration ever set foot in Castille, and now it is due for another update as per one of those pesky demands levelled against Malta by the meddling Council of Europe.

The Council of Europe is actually demanding that our Freedom of Information Act should be updated, “using available international models, to guarantee the transparency of the administration vis-à-vis the media and the citizens.”

It seems the government’s bragging was lost on the Council of Europe’s rapporteur, who has seen the flies in the FOI ointment and who has demanded changes, having noted that “the Freedom of Information Act is undermined by many exceptions to the principle of access to official documents, with the result that public authorities systematically obstruct requests for official documents and the transparency of the administration is not guaranteed.”

Speaking of obstructing requests, since our sister daily paper complained in its leading article last Monday about the state of affairs, we have been treated to still more refusals by a government apparently living under siege mentality and very rarely lowering the drawbridge to information.

In fact, over the last few weeks this publishing house has had a success record of just one out of six Freedom of Information requests having been acceded to. We have had a repeated request for Neville Gafa’s contract denied, as well as a second request for information on Konrad Mizzi’s highly dubious trip to Dubai in August 2015. We have had FOIs on Learning Support Assistants, on the land reclamation policy document, and one on Malta Air all denied over the span of the last three weeks.

Meanwhile, one request pertaining to the numbers of unaccompanied child migrants was actually acceded to. This is pretty much par for the course with the rest of the FOI requests that we have filed since 2013.

This situation does not only pertain to his publishing house, but it persists practically across the board. But we are sorry, this is not a pick and choose situation. 

The people, and us in our role as Fourth Estate, are entitled to this information. It is our right and it is not a privilege to be accorded to us at the government’s fancy or when the answers are not too uncomfortable. 

Information is information, all of it – the good, the bad and the ugly. And that information is a sacrosanct right, unless it compromises national security, and in which case we would, out of responsibility, and as we have done in the past with or without FOI requests, respect that argument when we are of the firm belief that it is being applied appropriately.

But to get the government to cough up the information it should be dispensing with will many times, at the bitter end of the day, require hauling the government to court. That, the government figures, is prohibitively expensive for private individuals and even for media houses, and that is exactly what those who are denying us information are banking on – that no one has the gumption to go the whole nine yards.

This may just have to be put to the test one of these days.