Archive for May, 2010
Pension dodgers face fines
(CNS): Private sector employers that do not meet their obligations under the national pension law to pay their employee pension contributions will now face on the spot fines. The goal is to avoid the need for protracted and lengthy court proceedings to impose sanctions on non-compliant employers but to enable the pension board to impose immediate financial penalties on those that don’t pay. Speaking to CNS from the Cayman Brac on Friday Minister Rolston Anglin said that fine systems had proved to be the best way of improving compliance and reducing bureaucracy.
Obama leads charge for global press freedom
(CNS): President Barack Obama has signed a law intended to protect free press around the world. Underthe Daniel Pearl Freedom of Press Act, the State Department will identify countries where press freedom is being violated. Pearl, for whom the law has been named, was a Wall Street Journal reporter who was beheaded by militants in Pakistan in 2002. Obama said the law would be a signal to governments around the world that their actions, including treatment of the media, are being watched. Speaking at the ceremony, the president said that naming the law after Pearl served as a reminder that there are those who would go to any length in order to silence journalists around the world.
Quick response from Port Authority
(CNS): While government entities have 30 calendar days to respond to FOI requests, the Port Authority of the Cayman Islands responded to a request about the salary of the Port Director, (not the Chair of the PA Board Stefan Baraud who is a volunteer) in just five days. The director earns between $15,000 and $17,000 per month (or $180,000 to $204,000 per year), according to the response. However, the information officer declined to specify the exact amount or details of the contract under the exemption in the FOI Law: ‘Records likely to endanger health and safety’, explaining that threats had been made to the port director’s life and that releasing this information might further provoke harassment.
Mickey gets the straight dope
(CNS): Police burned 14534.528399 lbs of marijuana between January 2005 and October 2009, according to a response to a freedom of information request made to the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service. The request was made by Mickey Mouse, an international household name and long time employee of the Disney Corporation who was publicly scolded by Premier McKeeva Bush at the televised press briefing last week for making FOI requests in the Cayman Islands. Mouse told CNS, "Although thereis information contained in the response from the Information Manager, I did not get copies of the records containing this information, which is what I requested and what the law provides for."
The ageing cartoon character also said he planned to make many more requests.
New minister marks day against homophobia
(Pink News): New Foreign Office minister for Europe David Lidington has released a message to mark International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO). Mr Lidington, a Conservative MP, said the Foreign Office was "committed to promoting British values" abroad, including LGBT rights. His message said: "The UK has a long and proud history of defending the basic rights and freedoms of the oppressed and vulnerable. "We are committed to promoting British values overseas and to placing human rights at the heart of foreign policy. "Everyone, including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people should be free to enjoy the rights and freedoms to which people of all nations are entitled."
Street fight ends in stabbing
(CNS): According to eyewitness reports, the holiday weekend has been marred by a major street fight that broke out in the early hours of this morning (Monday 17 May), which resulted in a serious stabbing and landed one man in hospital. Police have confirmed that one man has been arrested and another taken to hospital following the incident, which was reported to them around 4:10am. The police said the fight took place in the area near the Marquis Plaza off the West Bay Road but they did not have full details of how the fight had erupted. Eye witnesses told CNS that the police were called to the incident and were already at the scene observing the disturbance when the man was stabbed in the neck.
EU goes after Credit default traders
(Bloomberg): Sovereign credit-default swap transactions face mandatory disclosure rules the European Union’s financial services commissioner said Monday Michel Barnier said he would deal with the sovereign CDS market “very severely.” Credit-rating companies should also be subject to tougher transparency rules when rating a country’s ability to pay back its debt, he said. “These people don’t like being out in the light of day,” Barnier said of sovereign CDS traders at a press conference in Brussels. “We’ll flood them with light.”German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy have called for curbs on speculating with sovereign credit-default swaps, which many blame for exacerbating Greece’s fiscal woes.
They have also called for a review of European Union rules regulating credit-ratings companies.
Liberal Democrat gets OTs
(CNS): The man who will now make the decision on any further borrowing requests from the Cayman Islands Government is a member of the Liberal Democrat arm of the UK’s new coalition government. Jeremy Browne MP has been appointed Minister of State with responsibility for South East Asia/Far East, Caribbean, Central/South America, Australasia and Pacific, Overseas Territories, human rights, consular, public diplomacy and the Olympics. The Liberal Democrat party has made no secret of its dislike for tax havens and members have been outspoken advocates on the need to close tax loopholes that allows big business to put money at arms length of the UK exchequer.
Bermudan press hits back at clamp down
(The Royal Gazette): Global press freedom organisations have denounced plans for a state-controlled council to oversee the media in Bermuda — while local journalists are calling for a rethink of the idea. Premier Ewart Brown tabled a bill in the House of Assembly on May 7 which purports to be for the creation of an "independent media council" but which would consist of a majority of members appointed on his recommendation. The Royal Gazette sent copies of the proposed legislation — which could be debated and passed by MPs as soon as Friday — to overseas media bodies, as well as politicians, journalists and others on the Island.
Who has the power?
On the same day that the premier’s ministry answered my freedom of information request about what countries he has visited since the elections and who accompanied him, I submitted another request asking about his travel expenses. If record keeping in the ministry is as it should be, these requests should be neither time consuming nor difficult.
The fact that the first request took the ministry from the 24 February, when they first received it (having been forwarded to them from the Cabinet Office where it was first sent), to 14 May to find answers to the questions posed highlighted a basic inefficiency in the system. It is mind boggling that the premier’s ministry didn’t know where the premier was and who he was with on any given day; this is the kind of information that should be posted daily on the premier’s website …well, if he had one.
An additional advantage to the country of having FOI in place is that it encourages better record keeping by civil servants. I have also submitted a request to bring the travel details up to date, so let’s see how long that takes.
For the record this is my request on expenses, sent to the ministry on 14 May: “Since the elections, how much has Ministry of Finance, Tourism & Development spent on travel for the Leader of Government Business/Premier McKeeva Bush and his travelling companions? On each trip, how much did the ministry spend on transportation, hotels, meals and entertainment, and other expenses?”
By law, the ministry must now acknowledge the request within ten calendar days, deal with it as soon as possible, and give me a decision within 30 calendar days unless they request an extension in writing. More details about the FOI process is on the FOI Unit’s website. What is not made clear on the site is the point that obviously irks Mr Bush – that people can make requests under pseudonyms via email. It seems to me that by spending a considerable proportion of last Thursday’s press briefing berating me by name for making an FOI, the premier has pretty much guaranteed that Mickey Mouse will be making a lot of FOI requests in the future.
Ironically, the theme of this year’s World Press Freedom Day, observed on 3 May, was “Freedom of information: the right to know”.
In his message UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right, enshrined in article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But around the world, there are Governments and those wielding power who find many ways to obstruct it. They impose high taxes on newsprint, making newspapers so expensive that people can’t afford to buy them. Independent radio and television stations are forced off the air if they criticize Government policy. The censors are also active in cyberspace, restricting the use of the Internet and new media. Some journalists risk intimidation, detention and even their lives, simply for exercising their right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas, through any media, and regardless of frontiers.”
In that press briefing ten days later Mr Bush, in the mostpublic way possible, ranted on live television and radio about a single FOI request and made threats to raise the Trade and Business licence for those media houses that incur his wrath to $100,000, saying that media owners who did not pay would go to jail for three months. No wonder he chose not to go to the UN seminar himself next week! I expect they want a word with him.
Regardless of the premier’s futile and childish threats (does he honestly believe that the UK government would allow him to embarrass them in that way?), it seems that the biggest threat to FOI working as it should in this country is obstruction by civil servants.
Information Commissioner Jennifer Dilbert recently raised concerns that government entities have not embraced the culture of freedom of information and said that requests for people’s identity, incidents of intimidation and unfounded refusals have all been reported to her office. We strongly endorse her plea for people to tell her office if they are encountering these problems.
But what happens to responses after they have been given to the person who made the request? If the information is considered general public interest, the FOI Law requires public authorities to publish it, and many government entities post the responses on their websites. However, this covers a lot of websites that people might not visit regularly or at all, and what about the information not considered general public interest?
In order to do our part to support this vital part of our democracy, Cayman News Service has introduced an FOI section, which can now be found on the main menu bar. This is the first stage in two developments on the site that I believe could help the Cayman Islands along the wobbly road to a true democracy. The first is the concept of “citizen journalists”, whereby you, the people, are able to bring to the public eye issues and events that you believe are important and not just wait for journalists to cover them. The second is an online public library, where anyone can look up local laws and find important public documents. (Soon come!)
If anyone has an FOI response that they believe should be in the public domain they can send it to me (nickywatson@caymannewsservice.com) with any additional information, relevant official letters and comments, as well as refusal letters, and we will post it in our FOI section. This project will only work if you, the public, run with the idea – make FOI requests (please use this valuable resource) and then send it to us to post in our FOI library.
As any tyrant will tell you, access to information is the key to power; if you are ignorant of the facts they can tell you anything they like. Freedom of information puts that key in your hands but it’s up to you whether you use it or not.