Today's decision is a decisive test for the government: whether it is headed towards murky darkness, or towards transparency and light. Have Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Finance Yair Lapid, Minister of Justice Tzipi Livni, and Minister of the Economy Naftali Bennett understood the new world, the new principles of openness and partnership in the public arena, and the legal and natural right to information as part of freedom of expression and as the basis of a democratic regime, or have they perhaps not? After all, what could be clearer in any state: the right of the individual to receive full current information on what ministers, members of Knesset, and officials do with his money. It is the duty of the organs of the state, of the government, to report to the true boss, whose agents they are, who elected them and who finances them, what they are doing with his life, with his loyalty, and also with his money.
There is just one practical test of the first government elected after this awareness dawned on the Israeli public: it must adopt the decision handed down by the judge today and carry it out immediately, as is. In other words, the task for Lapid, Livni and Bennett is to forbid the officials and the State Attorney's Office to look for and invent all kinds of delaying tactics; to order them not to engage in sophisticated diversionary exercises, such as hiding behind the threadbare argument that "privilege serves both the taxpayers and the state" because it does not serve the people of the state.
This also means forbidding the officials and the State Attorney's office from getting the large, strong companies that vacuum up the big money in state aid, and which the petition to the court was about Teva, Israel Chemicals, Check Point, Iscar, Intel and others to wheel out the tattered excuse of "protection of privacy". Anyone who takes public money, or to whom the public's representatives in the government choose to give money, has a duty to report to the owner (the public) what has been done with his money. Anyone who wishes to continue hiding behind the claim of protection of the privacy of his business, shouldn't take the money, should stay out of the game.
It seems that the state, the State Attorney's Office, officialdom, legislators, have still not internalized the shift. The officials who dealt with this case, the lawyers who represented them, the citations of laws and sections of laws, the precedents and arguments they reeled off, demonstrate that they are still stuck in the old world of concealment, preferential treatment, arrogance, and contempt for the masses. Today, the people in the Ministry of Finance, the Tax Authority, industry, and the law are in a state of shock. They, who so jealously guarded the sanctity of the pretexts and turned freedom of information into an empty shell, can't understand how this befell them. How could it be that Judge Michal Agmon, who is supposed to be one of their own, part of the legal-administrative oligarchy that is above the people, hands down a decision that expresses a liberal, open, transparent, public-minded outlook, and even anchors it in such tight, cogent legal argument?
How did the calamity happen that right at the beginning of her judgment, the judge reached for a quotation from another judge, one with a public-minded, democratic and open soul: former President of the Supreme Court Meir Shamgar, who wrote an article with the title "Knowledge is Power", and who saw the provision and disclosure of information to the individual by the authorities an essential to the participation of the citizens in a democratic state:
"Knowledge of what has been done or of what is planned is not required only at the time that representatives are being elected, but routinely and continually, because true democracy is not just a matter of electing representatives every so often, but also of allowing the citizen the opportunity and possibility of constantly monitoring the government's actions and responding to them."
There is practically no economic or financial law that the legislator has not taken pains to surround with iron walls of "exceptions", "conditions" and "filters", i.e., a series of pretexts written in high-flown legal language that enable the information to remain "just between ourselves", between the official and the minister and the privileged citizen, and hidden from everyone else. One restriction after another is designed to conceal, hide, and excuse. So it is with the Income Tax Law, the Law for the Encouragement of Capital Investment, and the Freedom of Information Law, which was supposed to introduce the transparency revolution here, but was hedged about with so many restrictions and conditions that it became a blocking factor, keeping information the preserve of the few, and checking transparency by force of law.
Without information there is no opinion
The following are the three main principles that led the judge to her decision, and that led "Globes" beforehand to demand what it demanded, principles that led the public at large to understand its right and duty to know:
Firstly, the right of the individual to information represents a pre-condition for exercising the constitutional right to freedom of expression. The flow of information from the authorities to the individual is required in order to form a free marketplace of opinions and ideas, for without information there is no opinion, and without opinion there is no expression.
Secondly, the right of the individual or the public interest in receiving information held by the authorities is based on a world view that sees government as the trustee of the public, and the information held by government as public property.
Thirdly, freedom of information is vital in order to maintain effective public oversight of government authorities. The flow of information from the public authority about the conduct of government is required in order that the public will be able to form an educated view, and consequently to make an informed democratic decision, concerning matters on the public agenda.
It can also be assumed that the very fact that government departments and agencies know that they are exposed to criticism will restrain them in their actions. In this way, freedom of information also contributes to boosting public confidence in government; it permits public involvement in the conduct of affairs, and promotes a worthy culture of government.
Further to today's decision, we need an amendment to the Freedom of Information Law, and the removal of all the barriers that have made the law lame, paralyzed, and deaf and dumb.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 8, 2013
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