Court orders Dominican lawmakers to come clean

Santo Domingo.- The Constitutional Court o Sunday ruled against an appeal filed by the Chamber of Deputies and upheld a lower court’s decision to release the names and salaries of advisors of those lawmakers to a person who requested it.

The ruling uphold the obligation for transparency throughout government as a way to halt corruption. It states that though the person would be be identified, it’s not about personal data or private information.

"So even if the right to privacy is a fundamental value of the democratic system, it cannot restrict the right of free access to public information, at the risk of repealing the citizenship’s tools to control the use and manage public resources, to place obstacles to corruption in public administration," said the Court in the Case 0042/12, released yesterday.

The Chamber of deputies filed the appeal after the Administrative Court ruled for Manuel Muñoz Hernández, who challenged the lawmakers for providing incomplete information on the people who advise then and theor wages.