President Aquino promised the people moral leadership.

Thus, campaigning for the presidency, he called on them to follow him along the Tuwid na Daan.

And follow they did as he won the elections with an overwhelming mandate.

But nearly two years into office, he could not even make up his mind on a bill that would uphold his moral principles.

The Freedom of Information bill seeks to keep people in government honest.

If enacted into law, the FOI bill would institutionalize full disclosure of government transactions involving public interest, and grant every citizen access to records under the control of the government subject to exceptions.

P-Noy, who vigorously pushed for the bill when he was still a senator, held back when he assumed the presidency, citing certain concerns and asked a Palace working group to study the matter further.

Communications Undersecretary Manuel Quezon III explained that the study group and the stakeholders have yet to reach a consensus and craft a final draft, that’s why Mr. Aquino did not mention it in his Sona.

The study group is composed of Quezon, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, Secretary Edwin Lacierda, and Secretary Ricky Carandang.

The President’s change of mind has disappointed political allies in Congress and outraged advocates of  disclosure of public documents.

P-Noy’s Liberal Party ally, House Deputy Speaker Lorenzo Tañada III, said he wanted to be “pleasantly surprised about how information plays an important role in good governance” in his most recent State-of-the-Nation Address.

“That would have made a big impact especially for advocates of Freedom of Information bill. He didn’t do it. What he mentioned was he’d like to put a closure to the compensation for martial law victims. So that’s half-half,” said the lawmaker, an author of one version of the bill.

“We’re still unclear about the signal from the Chief Executive himself. The question remains, is President Aquino really committed to see the FOI bill passed into law?” coalition Right to Know, Right Now! Coalition co-convenor Nepomuceno Malaluan asked during a forum held at the Asian Institute of Management in Makati  organized by the Center for Media Freedom Responsibility.

The FOI bill and a counterpart whistle-blower bill introduced in Congress would ensure greater transparency and accountability in official government transactions.

But absent the FOI and the whistle-blower measures, citizens can still check on the government by simply going online. 

This as broader adoption of the Internet I seen to  keep governments on their toes as wired-up citizens exercise their newfound power to check rights abuses.

“In nations and communities around the world, citizens are turning to online tools to keep their governments honest,” Google chief Eric Schmidt was quoted by a wire service report as telling business leaders on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Honolulu.

“Whistle-blowing has never been so easy,” he said.

Schmidt cited demonstrations that toppled the leaders of Tunisia and     Egypt in which activists used Facebook  to schedule protests, Twitter to coordinate them and YouTube to broadcast the events to the world.

“Online citizens can find like-minded allies, they can find like-minded diasporas from a country,” he said.

With 52 percent of the global population under the age of 30, the youth can have a bigger say on issues because they are the most prolific users of the Internet.

“They are the ones who are online, that’s how you reach them, that’s how they talk to each other. They share applications and proxy and circumvention tools and help magnify each others’ causes,” he said.

With only an estimated two billion of the global population of seven billion online, there is still room for expansion, Schmidt said.