Secrecy bill committee ‘not guaranteed extra time’
The following article was published in Business Live
Secrecy bill committee ‘not guaranteed extra time’
There is no guarantee that the ad-hoc committee deliberating the controversial Protection of Information Bill will be given more time, according to committee chairperson Cecil Burgess.
Speaking to BusinessLIVE after Friday’s committee meeting, Burgess said he had been requested by the African National Congress (ANC) to “explore” the possibility of the extending the life of the ad-hoc committee.
This, Burgess indicated, meant that he had to approach the speaker of Parliament to request permission and justify why the committee’s life should be extended.
“It is Parliament who decides on the life of the committee and it is, if you will, our own internal process,” he said.
Burgess also dismissed calls that a public interest defence be included in the proposed law and claimed that current government information security policy did not adequately protect classified information.
Opposition political parties and various civil society organisations, such as the Right2Know Campaign and the Treatment Action Campaign, have heavily criticised the Protection of Information Bill.
They argue that the bill’s provisions for strong prison sentences for people who expose corruption in government will deter whistleblowers and limit access to information on service delivery by the poor.
Burgess caused a stir among the committee members last week by saying that the time for deliberation was over and calling for votes on various sections of the bill.
However, earlier this week, the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu), an ally of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), weighed into the debate and threatened to take the government to the Constitutional Court if the bill was enacted in its present form.
“If the opposition parties and civil societies cannot get it right to have the bill changed, then Cosatu, as an ally of the ANC, will have to do it,” said Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven in a televised interview on Thursday.
ANC MP Llewellyn Landers called for an extension of the deliberations, because the ANC and Cosatu were due to meet this weekend.
“The ANC is very well-aware of the perception that it has stopped engaging on the bill,” Burgess said. “One does not want to create the impression that there has been insufficient time.”
The proposal for the inclusion of a public interest defence follows research into international practice, with Canadian law including a similar idea. “However, the concept of public interest does not exist in Canadian law as it was presented to us,” Burgess said.
Burgess went on to say that, in terms of the Protection of Information Bill, if someone possessed classified information showing that corruption was taking place, or that there was a threat to the environment, then that person could either take it to the government ministry concerned or to the police.
“The argument thrown back at us is that the police are corrupt. However, Parliament cannot legislate that the media take the role of the police because the police are corrupt,” he said, adding that, while there may be elements in the police force that were corrupt, this did not apply to the entire service.
He said that the Protection of Information Bill was necessary as there was no law that provided for the prosecution of government officials who leaked or stole information.
He said the government’s document security policy, called the Minimum Information Security Standards policy, was not enforceable in court.
“That policy details what kind of precautions should be taken to protect various levels of information classification, such as strong rooms. But it is just a policy document. No one is taking it seriously. If a person goes against it, one can (at the most) suspend him, but not actually take him to court on it. That’s why we need the law,” Burgess said.
Source: Business Live
