Media Azi Cartoon: Guaranteed Access to Information for the Moldovan Press Is Hardly or Never Applied

More than twenty years ago, the Law on Access to Information was adopted in the Republic of Moldova. At that time, experts remarked that our country was “the first of the ex-Soviet republics to adopt a law on access to information.”

We were the first to approve it, not to implement it, as time has told us. During all these years, journalists have to collect data of public interest bit by bit to do their job well and to inform our citizens about basic problems in the society. In many cases, they have to wait for too long, and quite often, no information “gets leaked” to the press at all. Officials and authorities who keep and manage information of public interest forget to regularly maintain the “systems” and improve the state of things or deliberately close all the “faucets.”

However, it is the citizens who suffer. Let us not let them die of their thirst for vital information.