Editorial: Government's bill on online news services - Back to the 1970s

It seems to be Labour's fate: doomed to repeat its mistakes over and over again.

In times of stress, it chooses the way of confrontation, thereby opening the way for an equal confrontation not just from the party in Opposition but also from civil society not enclosed in the government's wide network.

Ever since ministers Owen Bonnici and Evarist Bartolo presented the draft Bill aiming, as they say, to remove criminal libel but also entailing the registration of those internet sites with news content, the whole country has been telling government this is not on.

The government, typically, has ploughed on, with Minister Bonnici using some specious arguments to reinforce his side, but nothing has been changed, at least nothing substantive.

Now, inevitably, the Leader of the Opposition has signaled a campaign of Civil Disobedience. Just like the 1970s.

So we seem to have come back a full circle. Labour has not changed and it still intends to plough on regardless of any objection or opposition.

There will be suffering ahead. People will lose money or, maybe, jobs.

This is sheer craziness. A year before the election, when any government tries hard to reconcile itself with those sectors of the population it has alienated, this government is choosing confrontation.

This coming confrontation is not just with the people and citizens of Malta but also with the spirit of Europe as encapsulated by the EU Acquis, which Malta has subscribed to at its Accession in 2004 and which this government, glorying in the Presidency of the European Council bases itself upon.

In its hour of glory, the Maltese Presidency, already fighting to retain the honour of Malta in spite of the Panama Papers and other scandals, now adds to its problems a law that is easy to describe as entirely anti-European and also anti-Freedom of Speech.

Such laws are to be found only in totalitarian countries from China to Azerbaijan but certainly not in Europe. And where governments, such as in Hungary and in Poland, try to tamper with this freedom, they find the European institutions dead against them.

And this is a government, to boot, that sets up libertarian laws such as the Freedom of Information Act and then renders them void and inoperative. That sifts through the requests for information just as ministers, not just present ministers, play around with Parliamentary questions so as to avoid telling uncomfortable truths.

Once again we urge government to take a step back in the interests of peace and democracy. Such a Bill will not stoop rabid comments on blogs, comment  spaces etc. It may actually harden them.

But these comments can be tackled with the fair interpretation of the courts, as they do now. The only thing that can be changed is the removal of criminal libel, as many have asked for.

And it may avoid the divisive effect of a confrontation, of Civil Disobedience.

from The Malta Independent http://ift.tt/2mDLFtR
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