President appoints new members to RTI Commission

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has appointed new members to the five-member Right to Information (RTI) Commission under the provisions of Section 12 (1) of the Right to Information Act No. 12 of 2016. Two commissioners of the previous RTI Commission have been re-appointed.

The tenure of the Right to Information (RTI) Commission, which is the central oversight and appellate body established under the Right to Information Act of Sri Lanka, expired in September this year.

The new RTI Commission will be headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Upali Abeyratne. Other members of the Commission will be former member/retired President of the Court of Appeal Justice Rohini Walgama, Open University Department of Sociology – Department of Political and International Affairs Senior Lecturer Athulasiri Samarakoon; former member/Attorney-at-Law Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena, and Attorney-at-Law Liyana Arachchilage Jagath Bandara Liyanarachchi.

The Constitutional Council recently called for nominations for the Commission from the Bar Association, the media and civil society, and selected them from the nominations submitted.

Pinto-Jayawardena was nominated by the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, and Justice Walgama, was nominated by the Sri Lanka Press Institute and its constituent partners, the Newspaper Society, the Editors’ Guild, the Free Media Movement and the Working Journalists Association together with its affiliated partner unions.