Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has vowed to bring leg­is­la­tion to re­form so­cial me­dia should the PNM win the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

Young made the com­ments as he ad­dressed the PNM’s Na­tion­al Women’s League’s In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day cel­e­bra­tions at Sig­na­ture Hall in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day.

On Fri­day, Young promised to bring harsh­er penal­ties with re­spect to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, but yes­ter­day he took aim at so­cial me­dia.

He said, “To the young women in our so­ci­ety to­day, one of the things I al­so un­der­take that we are go­ing to do in the next chap­ter when the coun­try gives us the man­date to con­tin­ue to lead–for the PNM to form the next Gov­ern­ment un­til 2030–what that Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to do is re­form the laws and leg­is­la­tion with re­spect to so­cial me­dia, be­cause you see, while so­cial me­dia is a good plat­form, it has al­so be­come, un­for­tu­nate­ly, a tool for cow­ards to at­tack our women, our young girls and our so­ci­ety. I am not go­ing to stand by idly once you give me the man­date to lead this coun­try and al­low that to re­main un­touched in the laws of T&T.”

It is not the first time Young has tak­en aim at so­cial me­dia. In Oc­to­ber 2019, dur­ing a Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, Young backed then com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Gary Grif­fith’s state­ment about the po­lice mon­i­tor­ing and analysing so­cial me­dia ac­tiv­i­ty us­ing sur­veil­lance sys­tems. Lat­er that month, dur­ing an ad­dress at a work­shop on re­gion­al cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, he said so­cial me­dia was the “sin­gle largest threat we now have to democ­ra­cy.”

In T&T, there have been sev­er­al cas­es be­fore the court con­cern­ing defam­a­to­ry state­ments made on so­cial me­dia. Fi­nan­cial sex­tor­tion has al­so be­come an in­creas­ing con­cern in the coun­try.

Young hit out at the “ir­re­spon­si­ble use of so­cial me­dia.” He al­so took aim at Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, adding, “You will judge who is the par­ty that re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ates our women, who is the par­ty that lift­ed our women in­to their right­ful po­si­tions of lead­er­ship from the pres­i­den­cy right down to a whole-of-so­ci­ety, which is the par­ty that re­spects our women and lis­tens care­ful­ly and at­ten­tive­ly to our women as op­posed to those in po­si­tions of lead­er­ship who den­i­grate, at­tack and dis­pose of women as they have shown over the last 15 years.”

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Re­ac­tions

Re­act­ing to the an­nounce­ment, lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ In­sti­tute for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies Dr Gabrielle Ho­sein said, “Min­is­ter Young has been rais­ing this as an is­sue for some years, but we need de­tails be­fore we can as­sess what’s planned. The pop­u­la­tion is scep­ti­cal as the min­is­ter has been in gov­ern­ment since 2015, so any­one would ask; why tack­le these now and not all that time? But we look for­ward to con­sul­ta­tion and the right promis­es made and kept.”

Ho­sein added that it is ex­cit­ing that the min­is­ter sees women and girls as a con­stituen­cy whose rights and de­mands mat­ter. “That sig­nals a re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to lob­by for what women re­al­ly want and need,” she fur­ther stat­ed.

Mean­while, Sab­ri­na Mowlah-Baksh, who is gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence, wel­comed the news, say­ing, “The plat­form is al­so be­ing used as a means for dig­i­tal dis­in­for­ma­tion and even ex­tor­tion. Reg­u­la­to­ry pro­ce­dures, es­pe­cial­ly around con­sent, must be in­tro­duced to ad­dress some of these is­sues. Then there are al­so is­sues around defama­tion and con­se­quences for dis­in­for­ma­tion. Poli­cies that pro­mote re­spon­si­ble be­hav­iour and which pe­nalise harm­ful be­hav­iour on this plat­form are much need­ed.”