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There’s nothing called a perfect law: Justice Minister
Parliament on Wednesday passed a landmark Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill after multiple amendments and amid concerns raised by the Opposition that the legislation would negatively impact the media and Right to Information (RTI) law.
The bill had been controversial from the outset, with media groups including the Editors Guild of Sri Lanka and Transparency International calling on the Government not to rush through the passage of the bill without addressing concerns related to it. A Fundamental Rights Petition filed against the bill by the Young Journalists’ Association was dismissed by the Supreme Court after objections were raised that it was not filed within the time-frame prescribed by the Constitution.
When the bill was taken up for debate on Wednesday, Chief Opposition Whip Lakshman Kiriella requested that the Samagi Jana Balawegaya’s (SJB) opposition to the bill be recorded. He pointed out that the draft bill had not been analysed by the Sectoral Oversight Committees, which have remained defunct due to the Government’s decision not to appoint members to them. Media groups were also opposed to the bill in its current form, he added.
A PDP bill is essential to carry out the digitalisation project the Government had envisaged under President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s manifesto, Sports Minister and State Minister of Digital Technology and Enterprise Development Namal Rajapaksa said.
He claimed the Government gave ample opportunity to those who had concerns to raise them and propose amendments during a series of public consultations held on the bill. “No matter how much new technology we introduce in this drive towards digitalisation, our children will not obtain any of the benefits if we don’t lay the legal framework beforehand. We need to protect people’s personal data first.”
The National People’s Power (NPP) supports the bill in principle, MP Dr Harini Amarasuriya said, “but we need to ensure that the bill does not have any impact on the right to expression and especially on journalism and media freedom.” There were specific areas of concern in the bill which if addressed, could make it much stronger.
She noted that the bill imposes restrictions on journalists and the media when processing personal data, making it difficult for them to use such data for reporting. “Therefore, some definition on the use of personal data for journalistic purposes could be included in this bill as this would make this area much more clear to enable data to be used freely for journalistic purposes,” Dr Amarasuriya suggested.
There is no question that the PDP bill is extremely important, but the SJB was calling for amendments it proposed to be included in it as well, MP Mayantha Dissanayake said. “Unfortunately, the minister has disregarded our amendments and gone ahead with the bill. We only require small changes, especially from the point of view of journalists, the freedom point of view and the Right to Information point of view. We are not trying to do politics. There are genuine concerns.”
The Government itself has proposed many amendments to the draft bill to be made at the Committee stage, dealing with some of the objections that have been raised, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP M.A. Sumanthiran said. “Why is it then not possible to constructively engage with the concerns that are raised and make those amendments?” he queried.
The independence of the proposed Data Protection Authority that is to be set up under the new Act is a cause for concern. Though the Government had removed the words “controlled by the Government” in relation to the authority as part of the amendments it intends to introduce to the bill, the authority would still in effect be controlled by the Government, Mr Sumanthiran added. “Don’t just remove the words. Change the nature of the authority and make it independent.”
He also said the new Act would seriously undermine the RTI Act and urged the Government to consider exempting the RTI Act from the new PDP Act.
There is nothing called a “perfect law,” Justice Minister Ali Sabry said in his concluding remarks. “If you wait for a perfect law, like you waited in the last Parliament for the PTA and Counter Terrorism Law, it will never come. So let us take this and move on,” he stressed. The Government has not adopted a confrontational attitude and moving a number of amendments at the Committee Stage debate on the Data Protection Authority which shows that it is willing to listen to concerns, the minister said.
There is nothing called “journalistic rights” and in Sri Lanka, the rights of journalists and the right of all citizens to freedom of expression are one and the same, he further noted. “Journalists don’t have anything beyond that, though they have a certain amount of privileges.”
He insisted that the Government had no intention of using the new Act to clamp down on journalists. “Don’t make a bogeyman out of this Act. It is a very practical and progressive one. It lays down essential infrastracture for the drive to take this country down the path towards digitilisation and the introduction of new technology,” Minister Sabry told the Opposition.
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