RvA argue for more transparency

August 24, 2011 6:57 AM

Since recent, the Advisory Council (RvA) of Curaçao has their own website, namely www.raadvanadvies.an – listing their latest advices. However, the RvA request cooperation from the Parliament in adding more documents on their website. These advices from RvA can only be published once they’ve been made public.

The RvA sets great store by their website. “In view of the importance of the publicity in a democratic constitution, the Council wants to make their advices more accessible via this website for the citizen. They also intend to have the website mention which requests for advice the Council received and the settlement data of these requests,” according to a letter from the beginning of this month to the Parliament.

However, according to the RvA, they can only place these on the site after they’ve been made public. In this respect, the advisory organ requests the help from the Parliament. In conformity with the National Regulation Advisory Council, the Parliament are to arrange for the publication of the advices. “The Parliament also arrange (…) for a written response on the advices. Subsequently, the second section of the article stipulates that the publication of an advice is to occur simultaneously with the publication of the written response from the Parliament on the relevant advice. The publication is took occur as outlined in the National Regulation Publicity of Administration (LOB) Curaçao – namely in the form of including this in a general available issue or separate publication, make this available for perusal or in copy.

In accordance with the LOB-Law, an advice is not made public when it could injure the safety of the country or if the importance of the publication does not countervail the observance of the private life. A publication is not made if there’s a question of a blank advice or if the advice from the RvA only contains comments of editorial nature. In this case, it is up to the RvA to indicate whether the government should made the advice public. The RvA state they wish to exchange ideas with the Parliament on how one wants to handle advice that is to be made public in the future. The RvA suggests that in the future the registrar of the Parliament forwards a written response to the secretary of the advisory organ on the given advice. Publication will only take place after the receipt of this response.

11 July 2011