– AG says PPP leading lights raised no objections at Select Committee

ATTORNEY General (AG) Basil Williams has said he will seek Cabinet’s advice on the sedition clause of the Cybercrime Bill before making any further decisions, but he roasted the People’s Progressive Party for what he called its hypocrisy on the contentious issue.
There has been widespread opposition to Section 18 (1) of the Bill which states that a person commits an offence of sedition if the person, whether in or out of Guyana, intentionally publishes, transmits or circulates by use of a computer system a statement or words, whether spoken or written, a text, video, image, sign, visible representation, or other thing, that “brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government established by law in Guyana.”

Although the AG said he will seek advice on the clause, he pointed out that careful thought was put into crafting the bill. “You have a bill that was drafted after a team from my chambers went to America on a cybercrime conference…they drafted it and drew on other jurisdictions…the bill was also published on our website and comments were invited and people submitted comments,” said Williams in an invited comment on Tuesday.
The comments were considered and the bill was adjusted, then reposted on their website, he said, adding that there was also a general consultation on the bill at the Pegasus Hotel before it was taken to the National Assembly.

According to the AG, the bill was open to further scrutiny at the level of the Parliamentary Select Committee after it was first tabled in the National Assembly. “When it goes there [select committee] is to ensure that any slippage would be addressed; now it [select committee] had leading lights from the PPP, including Teixeira and Nandlall and even Rohee…they never raised any objection,” the AG asserted.

He went on to point out that the PPP/C members had in fact stopped turning up for the final meetings before the bill was completed by the committee and laid in Parliament.
Leader of the Opposition, Bharrat Jagdeo, at a news conference on Monday said his parliamentarians lapsed in not challenging the clause at the level of the select committee. “After it was laid then these noises were made,” said the AG, adding that he believes the PPP/C would like to delay the bill because persons have been doing “nonsense” on the internet, like threatening the lives of the President and even the leader of the opposition.
Williams said perhaps they would look at the clause, but they cannot continue to allow cybercrimes to occur. The AG explained that cybercrimes mirror what exists in criminal law, but since they occurred in cyberspace a regime was needed to deal with them.
“Those crimes are criminal in the land and when it is done in cyber it is not criminal? That cannot happen, otherwise it would be a recipe for disaster, abuse would be the order of the day,” he lamented. Minister of State Joseph Harmon had recently called on critics of the Cybercrime Bill to not isolate specific sections of the legislation which are aimed at strengthening the state against cyber-attacks. Harmon had pointed out that the bill is government’s way of seeking to guard against espionage, sabotage and subversion. He said government is concerned about the state’s security systems and will do everything to protect same.

On Tuesday the New York-based Caribbean democracy group, the Caribbean-Guyana Institute for Democracy (C-GID) said the clause in the bill should be excised. In an interview Tuesday with the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC), the Institute’s President, Rickford Burke, a Guyanese, said he is astonished by the proposed legislation, which he described as “unconstitutional and an offensive infringement on free speech.” Burke asserted that he would expect such repressive legislation from the opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP). He said that the PPP, while in government from 1992 to 2015, ran a brutally oppressive and ethnocratic regime that suppressed free speech and the rights of minorities, while using the allegation of sedition to imprison several critics.
Burke said that although the PPP is now feigning innocence, its Members of Parliament made significant contributions to the construction of the abhorrent legislation during the Select Committee process in Parliament. He labelled the PPP’s subscription to the Bill as “disgraceful and unpatriotic.”