Just In: Mozambique Constitutional Council refuses to declare state secrecy rule unconstitutional

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Just In: Mozambique Constitutional Council refuses to declare state secrecy rule unconstitutional

2:17 CAT | 08 Apr 2020

The Mozambican Constitutional Council (CC) has denied a request that it declare unconstitutional a rule of the State Secrecy Law, which the Ombudsman considers contrary to the right to information.

Mozambican Ombudsman, Isac Chande, asked the CC to review the constitutionality because he felt that the rule prevented the exercise of the right to information of public interest in the possession of certain public entities.

In a ruling dated March 30, but released on Tuesday, the CC’s seven judges rejected the request, considering that the legal provision in question complies with the country’s fundamental law.

“As may be seen, contrary to what is claimed by the applicant [Ombudsman], under the law, the principle of the obligation to publish [matters of public interest] is also subject to restrictions,” the ruling reads.

The seven judge counsellors of the constitutional jurisdiction body note in their ruling that the law on the right to Information itself imposes restrictions arising from State secrecy and information classified as secret, restricted and confidential.

According to judges, the protection of state secrecy results from a historical post-national independence framework, which imposed the need for measures to organise a system to protect and safeguard national conquests against forces hostile to the Mozambican state.

“It has always been a concern of the Mozambican state, both in the single-party political system that has been in place since 1975, as well as in the multi-party political system, to protect the State,” the ruling observes.

The CC considers that restrictions on the right to information are not unconstitutional, if they are provided for in the Republic’s Constitution itself, or in an ordinary law that respects constitutional principles.

“In Mozambican law, State secrecy constitutes an authorisation to legally restrict the right to information and is one of the means of guaranteeing the containment of access or disclosure of matters that should not be in the public domain,” the CC text reads.

In this sense, the document continues, the existence of a legal regime on state secrecy is clearly permissible under a democratic rule of law such as that of Mozambique.

Source: Lusa