The House of Representatives is scheduled to deliberate a number of important bills, including the long-awaited Freedom of Information Bill. This bill was first proposed in November 2001 by the previous members of the House, but languished in the legislature until last July when it was revived. Many observers wonder why it has taken so long for the bill to be passed into law.

Two months ago, the government asked for a five-year grace period once the bill becomes law. This before lawmakers had even begun to deliberate the bill. If the grace period is granted, the law would not come into effect until 2011, or two years after the end of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's current term.

Why delay such an important tool for fighting corruption when combating graft is one of the government's stated priorities? Has the govern-ment lost steam? The whole episode is confusing.

Is it possible that the government is afraid of information? When uncertainty still shrouded the bill in February 2002, the government hastily prepared the State Secrecy Bill, in what looked like an attempt to counter the bill on freedom of information. It is difficult to shed the impression the government is reluctant to support the information bill. Why? It is not clear. What is clear is that the State Secrecy Bill can be used to silence critics, especially in its current form, with no clear definition of what exactly constitutes state secrets. It looks like a tug-of-war is taking place between the public's interest and the state's interest, where the information bill favors the first.

Once the bill on state secrecy becomes law, it will make it very difficult to investigate certain scandalous cases. And there is no shortage of irregularities that should be investigated.

We are not against protecting state secrets. The question is how to package this need into law. In truth, the protection of state secrets does not require a separate law, having already been incorporated in the Freedom of Information Bill. This allows clear guidelines on what constitute state secrets.

The world is moving in the direction of more open information, as more and more countries adopt freedom of information laws. There are valid reasons why Indonesia must join this trend. The country has just emerged from a 32-year dictatorship that caused much suffering for the people. There is an urgent need to throw off the mind-set nurtured under this system.

It is an uphill battle since the current bureaucracy is a legacy of the New Order administration, notorious for its close and repressive political culture. The Freedom of Information Bill can help break up this culture. Cultivating a culture of providing information to whoever wants or needs it is, therefore, a logical step.

Moreover, controlling the bureaucracy is more urgent than controlling the people. History shows that state secrets are more often than not leaked by the bureaucracy or the powers that be. A number of high-profile cases come to mind. One example, when the rupiah crashed in 1998, who profited the most? Another reason for ensuring greater access to information is the irony that information concerning public interests is not easy to come by. Can anyone obtain bid documents for public projects, for example, as is the case in neighboring countries? Can anyone obtain data from government ministries with ease? It is not difficult to obtain secrets in this country, as long as you have cash. This must change, unless the government wants to maintain the closed political culture of the New Order regime. That would be a betrayal of the people who put their trust in the hands of President Yudhoyono.