By Zainab Joaque
President of SLAJ, Kelvin Lewis, has called at the office of the minister of information and communications, Alpha Kanu, in Freetown to ask that the government decriminalizes free speech to deepen democracy in Sierra Leone. He recalled that President Ernest Bai Koroma in 2007 promised that he would ensure that libel was decriminalised, “but that does not mean expunging the whole law of the 1965 Public Order Act. We are concerned with the part that criminalises libel”. Lewis, who was accompanied by members of his executive, went on to say that long before that argument there had been the issue of what would replace the criminal libel law.He said there was the Bankruptcy Act, which he believedcould take care of whatever fear anybody might have when the criminal libel law would have been removed. Most African countries,he said,were now moving away from the said law as it would not only affect journalists, but also ordinary citizens who wanted to express themselves freely. He pleaded with the minister to help present their case so that they could move forward from criminalising libel and locking up journalists. On the issue of the Freedom Of Information Bill, the SLAJ president committed himself and his executive to working with the ministry in achieving a few things, especially with the passing of the FOI bill into law. “With your experience as a former parliamentarian, we implore you to use that expertise to rally around your colleagues to see to it that the FOI is passed into law”, he urged. He concluded by saying that SLAJ was a responsible association and would like to be part of the constitutional review process. “We want to ensure that we play our role in helping mobilize the public on the review by appropriately disseminating some of the issues that comeout of the process”, he suggested, adding that “we want you to ensure that SLAJ is remembered with regards to its role and what we can do towards that process”. Minister Kanu responded by saying that SLAJ was a governance institution, a guarantor of people’s rights and as such all of that the president had asked for were not only of interest to SLAJ alone. “The FOI is a governance imperative. That is why we as a government did all our best to take it to parliament.But you have appealed to another aspect of me, to go and talk with my colleagues to accelerate the tabling of the FOI bill”, he said. On the issue of the Criminal and Seditious Libel Law, the minister said the current executive was being different in its approach because it was not asking for the repeal of the whole Public Order Act, but was asking for the amendment of certain clauses. “That is different from what the hue and cry has been.Without the Public Order Act you will have chaos.But that aspect, specifically targeting or that could impact on journalists and other people who may want to express their opinions, is a concern”, he noted. “You are not asking for repeal, but for an amendment. We are going to look for best practices, certainly can’t have a blanket repeal.There must be some sanctions for people who go out of track”, he warned.
