Amendments can be made to exclude specific groups of people, media practitioners included, from the prosecution under the Cyber Crime Bill.
This was an option Government Whip Dr Roodal Moonilal gave to members of the media after the weekly caucus meeting at the Office of the Prime Minister, St Clair, yesterday.
Stating that he did not want to speak out of turn, Moonilal said: “You could also look at exclusion clauses... where you can exclude a group of people with elementary occupation. You could even exclude by sector.
“There is a way you could build the legislation to target who might be the people most likely to offend as opposed to the people who even if they offend may be a public interest matter.”
Moonilal said it was agreed at the caucus that there would be a small team to deal with the matter.
The team is headed by Communications Minister Vasant Bharath and will include Attorney General Garvin Nicholas, National Security Minister Brigadier General Carl Alfonso and Food Production Minister Devant Maharaj.
Moonilal said a comprehensive discussion was held at the caucus where Alfonso gave a full account of the bill and the consultations that took place.
He said over the weekend the caucus also received communications from several organisations giving suggestions about the issue. However, Moonilal said the recommendations were not as detailed as the caucus would have wanted.
At 10 am tomorrow the team would meet at the Ministry of Communications with the executive from the Media Association of T&T (MATT) and the T&T Publishers and Broadcasting Association (TTPBA) to discuss their issues with the bill.
The clauses Moonilal identified were 9, 13, 19 and 20.
“They would meet with MATT and TTPBA to have a bit more detail on what they believe to be the offending clauses and the some of the clauses in some way that may be abused or violate their rights in some way,” he said.
MATT and the TTPBA issued statements objecting to parts of the bill which they described as “worrying” and “may ultimately result in the demise of our democracy.”
“We are well aware over the years of the harassment of journalists and it is not something we would want to sit back and legislate.
“It is something we are very mindful of. So we will strike a balance between creating new offences and new laws to deal with a new level of crime with the use of technology and at the same time balancing rights and work engines,” Moonilal said.
He said the Government would not vote on the bill tomorrow but would wait for the report on the meeting with MATT and TTPBA.
He said next Monday the caucus would receive a report from tomorrow’s meeting on where it could make the necessary amendments in time for the Cyber Crime Bill to be debated on Parliament next week Wednesday.
“We intend to meet next week Monday to discuss the matter further so that if needs be appropriate amendments are made before we go to Parliament so that the debate may continue because there are several speakers who need to deal with separate issues.
“As you know this cyber crime legislation is a comprehensive pack. We are dealing with cyber bullying and a host of other matters so that we can continue on Wednesday so that we could continue with interested parties on Wednesday morning,” he said.
Moonilal reaffirmed Government never intented to restrict the freedom of the press.