A number of legislators charged that the bill was being bogged down in Congress by “perverse” amendments introduced in the Senate following its passage in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, in 2003.

At a private breakfast meeting with a group of legislators from various parties the IAPA delivered a series of recommendations (see at end) on access to public information and on decriminalization of libel. Both issues were discussed the previous day at a forum in which prominent constitutionalist lawyers and Argentine jurists as well as journalists took part.

IAPA President Diana Daniels, The Washington Post Company, Washington, D.C., said that with regard to access to public records in Argentina “the biggest challenge is yet to come,” whether or not a law was enacted.

Daniels explained that there would be an “education stage and with it a change in the culture of confidentiality, the implementation of a uniform system of information gathering, and the education of public officials and citizens in the use of this tool.”

Gustavo Vittori, president of the Argentine News Companies Association (ADEPA), added his voice to the criticism of the “bogging down” of the bill, saying that “it is noteworthy that a proposal for access has so many obstacles – there should be no problem when it is a matter of improving the institutional quality of Argentine democracy.”

He added that if the law was enacted “the first to benefit from it would be the politicians, because they would gain in transparency and in trust and credibility.”

The reading of the recommendations that were delivered to the legislators during the breakfast meeting with IAPA officers was conducted by Sergio Muñoz, of the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, California, who is the co-chairman of the IAPA’s Chapultepec Committee.

Raúl Kraiselburd, editor of El Día of La Plata, Argentina, and a former IAPA president, was the moderator of a panel discussion which invited opposition legislators failed to attend.

Kraiselburd declared that an access to information law was not to grant a special privilege to journalists. “The IAPA defends the right of all human beings to receive, seek and impart information,” he said.

Ernesto Ricardo Sanz, national senator for Mendoza province for the opposition Radical Civic Union (UCR) party, described the bill for a law on access to public information as being “bogged down” in the legislature. He explained that the bill had been passed by the Chamber of Deputies in 2003 but was sidetracked in the Senate, especially by the opposition to it of Senator Cristima Fernández de Kirchner, the wife of the Argentine president.

Sanz called this maneuver “a perverse action” that was due to the governing party using a November 2004 amendment to move against the news media and the practice of journalism.

Margarita R. Stolbizer, the UCR national deputy for Buenos Aires province, said that what was important was “to understand that an access law is a tool that serves to grant equality to citizens and implies the right to participate” and that it was akin to education in that “information and education are both equalizing elements.”

Slobizer added that information enables control by the people, “a sensitive point in Argentina to give the government greater transparency and combat corruption.”

Roberto Rock, editor of the Mexico City, Mexico, newspaper El Universal, said that it was fundamental that this kind of law create a regulatory entity to ensure its effective implementation and educate both public officials and citizens on how to proceed with requests. He noted that 12 countries, among them Mexico, of the 68 in the world that have access laws do have regulatory bodies.

Rock added, “This law is not now in Congress or in the media, it is in the hands of the people” and its passage would influence other Latin American countries currently discussing similar ones – as in Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and others.

Recommendations

Among those attending the breakfast meeting at which the recommendations were delivered were: 

National deputies from the Justicialist party Gerardo Amadeo Conte Grand and Christian Ritondo (Federal District); Jorge Alberto Landau (Buenos Aires); Juan Manuel Urtubey (Salta); from the Radical party Luis Gustavo Borsani (Mendoza) and Margarita R. Stolbizer (Buenos Aires) Hugo Storero (Santa Fe); from the Civic Front party Esteban Eduardo Jeréz (Tucumán); from the Socialist party Héctor Teodoro Polino (Federal District); from the Commitment to Change party Jorge Reinaldo Vanossi and Federico Pinedo (Federal District); from the Civic and Social Front party Lucía Garín (Catamarca).

National senators from the Justicialist party Sonia Escudero (Salta) and Guillermo Jenefes (Jujuy); from the Socialist party Rubén Héctor Giustiniani (Santa Fe); from the FREPASO party Diana Beatriz Conti (Buenos Aires), and from the Radical party Ernesto Ricardo Sanz (Mendoza).

Recommendations of the Workshop for Lawyers on Press Freedom on Argentina organized by the Inter American Press Association for the Legislative Conference on Press Freedom – November 2-3, 2005

On Access to Public Information

With regard to the Bill for a Law on Access to Public Information that was passed by the Chamber of Deputies in 2003 and amended by the Senate in 2004, the following is recommended:

To recognize the importance of a law on access to public information so that the people may access information in the possession of the government, and that thus there be no violation of international human rights treaties of which Argentina is a signatory, undertaking to heed its international responsibility.

To request that the bill be accepted as originally passed by the Chamber of Deputies in that the amendments introduced by the Senate lessen the transparency of government actions and do not allow for equal access to information. The lower house’s bill was the product of a social consensus responding to international standards in the matter that impose upon the government the duty to submit itself to democratic principles of rendering account and transparency.

On Decriminalization of Libel

In this matter the following is recommended:

To amend the Criminal Code to remove the offense of libel committed through the exercise of freedom of expression. The doctrine of the inter-American agencies for the protection of human rights holds that criminal liability discourages and unduly limits the flow of information to which the public has a right. In this regard, it should be noted that the Argentine government on October 1, 1999, pledged before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to amend those legal definitions in the above-mentioned terms.

To look into adjusting  rules and regulations governing civil responsibility to the criteria established by the American Convention on Human Rights, the doctrine of malice aforethought, and the Campillay doctrine.