CYBERCRIME BILL GOES THROUGH PARLIAMENT, AT LAST
So now it’s time to think twice about what we put out on social media from anywhere in the world. Well, it may take a few weeks more before the final stage in the enactment of this bill is completed – parliament has to incorporate the amendments agreed on and then Principal will sign the bill into law. We don’t know if there will be a public ceremony to sign the bill but let’s give ourselves two more weeks for the cycle to be completed.
Our MPs from all sides of the House are congratulating themselves for “doing a good job” in safeguarding civil liberties in cyberspace. We’ll see how that plays out when people start taking action in our courts. We know that powers were shifted from the hands of the police and politicians into the hands of judges in some crucial areas of the bill. That’s not strange because people have always turned to the courts to defend themselves against arbitrary arrests or frivolous prosecutions. Let our judges do their job.
This is a country in which many people at home and abroad think anything goes on social media – they publish outright lies, use unprintable words against decent citizens, they distribute gory pornographic materials and they openly incite violence against the state and individual citizens. The evidence is all over the place. This bill will not kill all of that but we must warn that while the state may not prosecute people for making critical comments about how the country is run, we will hold our leaders accountable if they allow people to incite violence leading to the destruction of life and property even with this bill in place. Why would it be necessary to fight all the battles to put this law in place only to allow the same criminal behavior to continue! This bill is not just to honor international commitments. We have very serious issues to deal with at home.
Now individuals, whether in government or not, can go to court and defend their reputation and the government has NO CONTROL over that.
We congratulate the hardworking information minister and his staff, whose legislative agenda has been truly impressive, for this effort but they should now ensure the following:
1. No unregistered SIM cards should be in operation as from now on. NATCOM should compel the mobile phone companies to switch them off. Those are the numbers people use for prank calls and criminal enterprises.
2. The Ministry of Information and their allies should be on the road again to explain this soon-to-become law to people throughout this country. It’s very important to do so. They should NEVER assume that people know the new situation created by this piece of legislation.
THE PRICE OF FUEL WILL CONTINUE TO INCREASE
In the last few days we have seen a FAKE press statement on social media announcing that the pump price of petroleum products was now TEN THOUSAND leones. We found no trouble spotting that fake document but that was not the case for many Sierra Leoneans who kept passing it around asking people to authenticate it or out of plain mischief. We really can’t understand why people do such things. We are told that some supporters of the political opposition bent on causing apprehension are behind such with the aim of scoring points. Maybe it works but many Sierra Leoneans are fed up with such low level politics, if that were so. People must know that preaching to the converted doesn’t win elections.
Just before that a civil society organization was all over social media threatening street demonstrations if the price of petroleum was adjusted upwards. We don’t have all the time in the world to read their calculations but we absolutely trust the new leadership of the Petroleum Regulatory Agency. All their systems are transparent and it’s easy to see why we might after all have to accept a slight increase when it does take place. We are not Saudi Arabia or Russia; the Oil Marketers buy their products from abroad by a pricing system that all those who care to would easily access and calculate. What’s all this noise about demonstrating about something we have zero control over? This idea that the government should continue subsidizing petroleum products with our taxes so that the bulk of the consignment can in turn be consumed by a very greedy private sector is unacceptable. We have NEVER seen this group demonstrating on the streets to say thanks when the pump price of petroleum products falls. Prices have gone down twice in this country in the last three years. Let’s start producing and refining our own oil so we can even make it free at the pump. Hanging on every little thing to get some time in the headlamps of national publicity is not so much a good idea. The same formula that was used to bring down the price will be used to adjust it upwards if the global price increases, which it has.
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