The President’s Semantics and Section 18

May 01, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I had no idea what was inside the Cyber Crime Bill before I read an outpouring of criticism against it. I know now. After President Granger’s inscrutable interpretation of the criteria for becoming the Chairman of the Election Commission in the Constitution, citizens should not accept words vaguely composed in any legislation in this country. It inevitably leads to power abuse. We have been there before more than once.
I mean nothing personal against the President and I hope he is broad-minded to contextualize criticism but he shocked me, the effects of which I am still to extirpate from my mind with his approach to the wording of those criteria. The semantics were too plain and simple for me to accept that the President was innocent or naïve when he offered his explanation.
The words were unambiguous. If there is no one that possesses the status of a present or past judge then “any other fit and proper person” is eligible. President Granger openly declared that “any other fit and proper person” also means that the person must have judge-like qualities. It didn’t end there. He got prominent lawyers to endorse his meaning and when the Chief Justice ruled that “any other fit and proper person” does not mean the person has to be a judge, the President said that was her interpretation and he has his own.
What makes any citizen in this country feel that the government will not put its own peculiar understanding to the words of Section 18? I have had personal experience with Minister Harmon and the President putting their ill-shaped interpretation to a particular column of mine in which I was accused of making mischief.
Trade unionist, Norris Witter, told me he took objection to that accusation against me and raised it on a television panel he was a part of and called upon the government to apologize to me; the apologize is still to come.
It is for this reason Section 18 of the Cyber Crime Bill is harmful. The section is inherently in confrontation with simple grammar and if it is to remain, it will be used by the state to repress and oppress human rights activists.
The section says; “A person commits an offence of sedition if the person, whether in or out of Guyana, intentionally publishes, transmit or circulates by use of a computer system, a statement or words, either spoken or written, a text, video, image, sign, visible representation that brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government.”
The parliamentary opposition and new political parties hoping to contest elections are now in trouble. The role of a party attempting to win an election is to create disaffection towards government.
A simply demonstration or picket exercise in front of the president’s office or a ministry is an act of telling people that they should feel aggrieved at what the government is doing. You are creating disaffection with the government. There is nothing illegal with opposition parties creating disaffection with the corridors of power.
That is one of the fundamental ways of winning an election. If you are going to win votes, you have to make the electorate feel that the government is incompetent, has no ideas, does not have the nation’s welfare at heart, lacks vision, and favouring one sector or stratum over others.
You pick up any newspaper from any country and you will see the activism of the opposition is to make the ruling establishment look bad. That is politics. There is nothing seditious or illegal about that. Your activism may not truthful but it is not illegal. As I write this there are widespread strikes and demonstrations in France.
Railway traffic has been extensively disrupted.
The question revolves around the meaning of disaffection. It means, “to remove affection from.” The Bill defines it as disloyalty. But government cannot compel citizens to be loyal to it. In modern politics, the role of an opposition to is ensure that people transfer their affection to you and not the ruling party.
I don’t care if there are other sections of the Bill that recognize the right to chastise the government; the presence of the word “disaffection” is dangerous. When criticism turns violent and treasonable then the state will step in. Opposition parties cannot use violence to get people to transfer their affection.
You cannot use fire against a ministry that implements a tax you think is burdensome. Whenever laws like the Cyber Crime Act come into being, the grammar must be deeply and extensively simple so that it cannot be used for ugly reasons by autocratic rulers.

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