While making it clear that the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) is strongly opposed to the inclusion of a sedition clause in the proposed Cybercrime Bill, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday said that lapses by the party’s Members of Parliament (MPs) may have allowed the government to include it.
“I think we dropped the ball on this matter… because it was only after the Monday meeting that we had in preparation for Parliament… when we had a good look at the bill that we recognised that this provision had been inserted in our absence,” Jagdeo said in response to a question asked by Stabroek News during a press conference yesterday.
Section 18.1 of the bill states that a person commits the offence of sedition if the person, whether in or out of Guyana, publishes, transmits or circulates by use of a computer system a statement or words, either spoken or written, text, video, image, sign, visible representation or other thing that “brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt or excites or attempt to excite disaffection towards the government established by law in Guyana.”
