Compass – Amman

Former Minister Bassam Al-Amoush warned against approving the cybercrime bill presented to the House of Representatives, because of its serious effects and repercussions on Jordanian society, which will make the courts teem with allegations and cases and may lead to societal conflict.

Al-Amoush said in a statement to “Al-Bawsala” that “the apparent reasons for this law are correct. We do not want to spread lies, scandals, hate speech, and invade people’s privacy. We do not want to present a dark picture of the situation, and we do not want to assassinate the character.”

But he added, “Is the government about to issue a new penal code? The word “punishment” was mentioned in this law more than forty times, so if the Penal Code exists, “let them amend it if there is a deficiency,” noting that “the Penal Code criminalizes defamation, contempt, and prolongation of the tongue, and this is sufficient.”

He added, “Today we are facing technological progress in front of an open space, while the government wants to shift to a totalitarian regime, and if it wants to, it must” stop satellite channels and stations of promiscuity and sex, but it will not do that.

Al-Amoush asserted that “the draft law in its current form is a sword shedding light on freedoms and a stab at democracy and political reform, which will make people live in a state of terror as programmed targeting will activate and the courts will be filled with allegations. This may have led to social, familial and tribal conflict, and perhaps bloody crimes that are not comparable to the crime of lying or naive publication.”

And he considered that “the phenomenon of collection is clear in this law, as governments have used in the past two decades to plunder people’s pockets, and with the exacerbation of poverty and the phenomenon of unemployment, Jordanians pay more than eighty percent of their revenues to the government from birth certificates to passports and to death certificates and the price of the grave and what is between that of an unfair tax on sales, not to mention excise, customs, land tax, real estate, television, university, rural money, health insurance, certification of certificates, departure tax, guard tax, sweepers, stamp tax, exam fees, university fees, and roofs Sun and water tax, electricity, internet, parking and any of your bills.

And the former minister continued, saying, “Does the citizen who bears all this need to be punished, or does he thank and pay tribute to him,” noting that “the government is the burden on the citizen, as the budget figures show that the Jordanian is the one who pays more than eight billion to the treasury.”

He explained that “the government should have consulted the people to generate conviction among them and not come down on their necks with the stick of arrest and fines,” pointing out that what people publish may be true or false.

Al-Amoush appealed to the Legal Committee and the deputies to radically amend the law, as long as the parliament did not want it from the start, to lift the injustice against those who elected them, and the elections are coming, and the names of those who support the law in its current form will be circulated.

(compass)