Slow down on digital crackdown

Hon. Folks, once upon a time when a DPP-led government made a law in haste to regulate air pollution, even some of the best legal minds in government did not understand it to the extent that they made us a global laughing stock by saying it meant to prohibit farting in public.

When government tried again to enact laws in haste by amending Section 46 of the Penal Code, changing the flag or barring ex-parte injunctions against government, it ended up passing what was aptly described as “bad laws”.

The same MPs who had the temerity of passing such bad laws ended up repealing all of them in under 24 months. Of course, to say such bad laws touched the raw nerve of an autocracy-averse Malawi nation is very much an understatement.

They vented their wrath on the former President, Bingu wa Mutharika, who passed on while on a 60-day ultimatum to step aside or face nationwide demonstrations of the ‘Arab Spring’ proportions.

Under APM, there was hope that laws would carefully be interrogated and adequate consultations made to ensure a public buy-in. Isn’t APM the first Malawian Head of State who publicly promised to live the talk of “power to the people” by wilfully relinquishing some of the powers stashed by hook or by crook in the presidency?

But the fact that a controversial Electronic Transactions Bill is already on the Order Paper of business in Parliament shows that government still has a sweet tooth for acting in haste when it comes to enacting laws that crack down on people’s rights and freedoms.

How else do you look at the speed with which government has cobbled and pushed to the august House the bill meant to regulate various online transactions when compared to the litany of excuses government creates when confronted on its never ending promise to enact an enabling law for Sections 36 and 37 of the Constitution which provide for the right to access to public information by the media and the public?

I hate to say it but it hurts that nowadays, Access to Information Act is what the government promises when addressing journalists at a funeral of one of their kind. It starts there and it ends there. Yet, the processes to formulate bill started during the reign of Bakili Muluzi who has been on retirement for 11 years now.

It’s not as if Electronic Transactions Bill is bad per se or less important than the Access to Information Act. The digital platform poses many challenges, real and imaginary, that necessitate regulation by the public sector.

However, government should accept that acting in haste when passing laws has in the past yielded undesirable but costly outcomes. The internet and it’s many and diverse products are the tools of globalisation that affect Malawi just as they do other member countries of our global village.

Apart from consulting locally so we know and build trust on our government’s real — and not just good — reasons for the law, there’s also the need to ensure that such a law is in tandem with what’s emerging as the best global practice in regulating the digital platform.

While that is being done, government has a duty to expedite the enactment of the Access to information Act. The people — the ultimate stakeholders in democratic Malawi — who, like the media, also play a key watchdog role in the decentralised system of government we have adopted need to access public information with which to make informed decisions on development projects taking place in their areas.

For the nearly 30 years I have been in active journalism, I’ve learnt that access to public information isn’t exactly adding much value to the watchdog role of the media.

Crooks in the public sector or scandalous celebrities have a tendency to cover their tracks for fear of being caught. We catch them — as we already do — using techniques and devices more technical and hard-to-get than mere public information.

So, APM and the DPP-led government, rest assured Access to Information is more a tool for blocking the spread of Cashgate to the district, town and city councils than it is for exposing that which the fat cats in the public sector are trying to hide.