Acting late

August 1, 2012Posted inDemocracy35 Comments
Four years ago the prime minister pledged to enact a right to information law. The prime minister didn't give a definite time frame, but he promised that it would be done "soon". It's already been four years since the government made that promise. And we are still waiting for them to keep their word. Now, however, finally, there seems to be some movement: the Department of Media and Information has conducted an RTI awareness workshop, and the Ministry of Information and Communication has distributed a draft RTI Bill for public comments and feedback. But all this is for nothing.…

Short and sweet

January 23, 2012Posted inLegislature1 Comment
The 8th Session of the Parliament concluded last Friday. It was easily our shortest session: we started on 4 January and ended, barely 12 working days later, on 20 January. But the 8th session was historic. Her Majesty the Queen graced both the opening and closing ceremonies; and the members of Parliament got to offer the Oath of Allegiance to the Throne. Plus, the joint sitting of the Parliament amended the Sales Tax, Customs and Excise Act and the Public Finance Act to align them in accordance with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution which had been rendered…

Educating ourselves

January 9, 2012Posted inLegislature21 Comments
In 2010, when the government announced that 1,000 acres of land had been allocated to build the Education City, I had worried that, “government policy is being formulated around a particular project.” Formulating government policy to benefit one particular project is never a good idea. There’s simply too much room for conflict of interest, favoritism and corruption. But the government is not satisfied. They want to bestow even more support to the Education City project. They now want to enact a law specifically designed to benefit this one particular project. So today, the government introduced the Education City Bill…

Digging deeper

June 3, 2011Posted inJustice34 Comments
Yesterday, the government released the Tobacco Control Rules and Regulations. The rules, which come a week after the government had issued guidelines to relax the implementation of the Tobacco Control Act, have made matters even more complicated. According to the rules, we will not be sent to jail for attempting to bring tobacco into the country without declaring it or for possessing tobacco products. Instead, we’ll be let go with a warning or penalized in line with Sections 86, 87 and 90 which state that: 86.     If a person tries to bring permissible quantity of tobacco and tobacco product…