A parliamentary panel on Thursday cleared the controversial cybercrime bill amid complaints from many members that their reservations had been ignored. The bill, if approved by the National Assembly, could restrict speech and liberties online.National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Information Technology approved the Cyber Crimes Bill 2015 for a second time after lightly amending some clauses. While members of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) largely ignored arguments from opposition members, they were stunned when PML-N’s Awais Leghari too complained that he had not received a copy of the bill. The panel’s chairman Captain (retd) Safdar though convinced members to pass the bill so that it can be debated in the assembly, a larger platform. The bill grants unfettered powers to abuse-prone security agencies to interpret the bill’s provisions according to their own lights and harshly punish people for innocuous activity. Because of the outcry over its substantial potential for violation of civil liberties, the bill was sent to a Standing Committee on Information Technology for redrafting under the chairmanship of a decidedly non-expert Captain (retd) Safdar. Now, after months of the panel’s existence, the bill has been hurried onto the floor by the chairman, who denied the members a chance to go through the details because, as he justified it, he in his wisdom had read the final draft and found it satisfactory, and because all other alterations could be done by the whole parliament. In this time period, just a solitary public hearing took place where concerned people were supposed to voice their concerns but only selected individuals were given the floor.
A parliamentary panel is supposed to engage in debate and the bills under discussion have to be ensured to be ready for parliamentary voting, but the entire episode turned the whole process into a time-wasting joke. One is compelled to ask why the panel was even set up if parliament had to discuss amending it substantially all over again. Opposition members, led by PPP MNA Shazia Marri, were aghast at this blunt anti-democratic strategy of PML-N ministers but could do nothing. Under the guise of fighting terrorism and “supporting our armed forces”, the government can now have sweeping powers to heavily punish analysis, commentary, jokes, news reports and activism taking place online in an unashamed desecration of democratic principles of dissent and freedom of expression. Other than evidence of the regime’s authoritarian impulses, it is also proof of laughable incompetence as many sections of the bill betray minds that have no idea how the internet works.
pk.shafaqna.com
