I don't have any back story on this, but here's an editorial from the Filipino newspaper Business Mirror
FREEDOM of information, in “the prescient judgment of the framers of the Constitution” and former senator and Constitutional Commission member Blas Ople, “establishes a concrete, ethical principle for the conduct of public affairs in a genuinely open democracy, with the people’s right to know as the centerpiece.” Thus did a huge, multi-sectoral network remind everyone on Monday of the gravity of what’s at stake in a bill pending in the Senate, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as it urged lawmakers to squeeze, in their last 23 session days left before the May 2010 elections, a landmark bill that is now all of 22 years old. The passage of the law is long overdue, according to the Right to Know, Right Now! Network, because “it is a promise to the Filipino people that the Constitution assured in 1987 yet, or 22 years ago.”
