WHEN the Cybercrime Act came into being, I disagreed with many parts of it, particularly Section 18. Please see my column for May 1, 2018. But to argue that the Act should be abolished is opening the floodgates to major moral disasters in Guyana.
Mr. Datadin was on the Freddie Kissoon Show and he made the point at which I subscribe to that when you take out the offensive part, you cannot leave a vacuum. It must be filed with relevant contents. The current Act has faults, but the fault that the legislators must never allow to exist in the Act when it is amended, is the abuse of other people’s right to privacy and societal protection that currently exists in the social media sphere.

The degenerate, sickening de-recognition of people’s rights by some social media platforms in Guyana cannot be allowed to continue. If they do, unlimited lives will be destroyed and it will cut in many ways. People who want to perpetuate moral desecrations against government officials must know that just as they are mischievous against government folks, people can target opposition politicians too. In common parlance, it is referred to as “knack gat knack back.”
To avoid the permanent damage to innocent people’s lives, then the amended Cybercrime Act has to contain clauses to make people responsible for their evil intentions toward other persons who don’t deserve to be scandalised. The examples are overwhelming whereby certain social media influencers intend to destroy not only the career but the lives of public officials.

I believe once you enter public life you have to have a thick skin but there is a line to be drawn, and that line has been drawn hundreds of years ago and it is called the law of libel. Elected politicians must understand that people will disagree with their policies and say harsh things about them. Two types of insults are common. One is the minister is incompetent. The other is the minister is not ministerial material.

Those two criticisms and thousands of others come with the territory and they must be taken for what they are – the hazards of politics. Ministers then must have thick skins. But a minister should not be subject to the most, denigrating fictions about his/her personal life and false accusations of moral-wrong doing. Social media is full of such scheming people who find it comfortable to falsely attack public officials in the most inhuman ways.
Anyone who disagrees with amendments to the Cybercrime Act to stop evil platforms from damaging society does not belong in the real world. Here is my take on such people. Just go on social media and say the most appalling accusations of those who oppose the amendments, especially in the area of sexual misconduct and theft, and see if you don’t get an immediate lawsuit.

Let me repeat that for emphasis. There are people out there who are ready to pounce on the government for bringing in legislation to stop vile, vicious attackers that say horrible, immoral fictions against government officials. But if you pen the most vicious, horrible fictions about them, they will immediately sue. There is a term you apply to such people. It is called anti-government hypocrisy.

Let’s juxtapose emanations from the newspapers that result in libel against what obtains on social media. A former minister and a currently one of the leaders in an opposition party sued for being described as a low-life. I was sued by Roxanne Myers for writing that as deputy Chief Election Officer, she did not have the authority to determine who the Liberty and Justice Party wanted to be a regional councillor.

Those extremely mild things resulted in libel writs. But look what is said on certain social media platform, particularly against high government officials. Fictionalised, scandalised descriptions are posted on Facebook, jeopardising people’s lives, not just their marriage. I cannot see a human in this world that can deny there must be legislation to make people responsible in a court of law for their evil recklessness.

It is a concrete jungle on social media where it is open season on those social media platforms against people that the influencers dislike, or platforms run by persons who have an anti-government agenda. There is nothing wrong with having an anti-government agenda. That is a right society provides for every human.

But you have no right as an anti-government critic to include on your agenda the intention of fictionalising the private lives of politicians you do not like. In the past and at the present time, there was/is no unlimited freedom of speech. It never happened in the past in any country and it will never happen in the future.