Harry, I concur...its time make hard decisions...so, in terms of moving on, this is what I have in mind...I could be wrong... 1. For ICT Businesses, we cannot be seen seeking public opinion on the streets. We must therefore engage activists who understand our plight and can be able to separate our interests in this tower of babel. I would recommend Kictanet or its members to find ways of engaging Harun Ndubi and others with immediate effect...to be our voice in the public domain. 2. People in responsible positions don't only resign when they have made mistatakes, but sometimes, to give space for new ways of doing things and temporary relief. In any other country, sometimes, when things get out of hand, some people opt to take the heat to protect those who might be implicated unfairly. But I will rest this point since its not in our culture of doing things. 3. We probably need a round-table to mediate this issue before the public court makes decisions for us. Last time we conducted a poll in this list, James Rege emerged as a voice that was trusted by 90% of the members of this list. Further, he is now in-charge of the Committee handling this issue in Bunge. I would suggest that he is requested and financed to get the stakeholders in a 'War Room'. We should have ICT, Media, Courier, Govt, Civil Society and any other stakeholders represented. Less than ten guys and when they come out, we embrace the consensus they will have reached. It should be supported by all of us concerned. The position the round-table adopts can then be passed to the President as our negotiated agreement on what we would wish to see him do. Bill On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 7:29 PM, Harry Hare <harry@africanedevelopment.org>wrote:
Dear All,
I think it will add a lot of value if people paused for a bit and spend sometime to educate themselves on the clauses of the bill before commenting on it. Making suggestions and comments based on inaccurate media reports will not add value to this debate. I think what we are seeing is the complexity of legislating in a converged environment. As much as technologies have converged, the legal environment is yet to catch up and so are the stakeholders. Those in the know have been advising that the bill has too much scope and therefore too many stakeholders making it very difficult to steer through with all the stakeholders maintaining interest and therefore participate fully in the consultations. For instance, the ICT stakeholders want the bill through because it makes sense to them, but not our brothers and sisters from the forth estate.
So how do we move forward? I think, we need to convince our media colleagues that there is no malice in the bill and they are not targeted. Let the President sign the bill in its current form but agree on a programme for an immediate amendment (just like the proposed programme on the e-Transactions section), pulling out all the media/broadcast clauses into a separate bill. So the sector will then have 3 separate bills, the Kenya Communication Amendment Bill, the e-Transactions Bill and the Media Bill. The convergence route is trendy and interesting but the reality at the moment is, we may not be able to effectively engage all the stakeholders and have a law that cuts across everything, which unfortunately is the nature of ICT.
Kindest Regards Harry
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