Georgetown: Terrorist act is described as an act “whether committed in or outside of Guyana which causes or is likely to cause loss of human life or serious bodily harm, damage to property, prejudice to national security or disruption of public safety including disruption in the provision of emergency services or to any computer or electronic system or to the provision of the services directly related to banking, communications, infrastructure, financial services, public utilities, transportation or other essential infrastructure.”
This was disclosed during a stakeholder consultation which turned into an informative session Monday at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre, it was disclosed that the Anti-Terrorism and Terrorist Related Activities Bill 2015 is delinked from the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Bill.
The Anti-Terrorism and Terrorist Related Activities Bill 2015 is expected to be passed in the National Assembly later this week.
Participants at the event include, Citizens Bank, the Private Sector Commission, Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry, Demerara Bank, the Bank of Nova Scotia and various Attorneys among other stakeholders.
The consultation was called by the Ministry of Legal Affairs following pressure from the Private Sector Commission (PSC) and other bodies, however the event only sought to bring into focus; the relevance of such consultation.
During the proceedings, Legal Affairs Minister; Basil Williams highlighted that it is of utmost importance that the bill be passed before the next meeting of the American Regions Review Group (ARRG) in January.
“We need to get this Anti-Terrorism Bill through the house in time for us to deal with the face to face meeting with the American Regional Review Group in two weeks” the minister said.
He added that “this bill addresses attempts to criminalize terrorist acts, and also to criminalize the perpetrators of those acts and also the accomplices in the commission of those acts…we have to deal with this issue.”
Addressing the calls for consultation; the Minister said “do every bill that comes out of our chambers, do we have to send the bill out for consultations? Or we would determine the contents of that bill and decide on the questions of consultation. As a government, we have to make decisions; not the people in civil society.” He also stated that the bill was patterned from the Jamaican legislation and includes all of the recommendations of the Caribbean Financial Action Taskforce (CFATF).
The bill was however referred to as a “Fait accompli” by the Minister meaning that it is “something that has been done and cannot be changed” before the meeting with stakeholders.
However the participants of the session still believed that every bill should be consulted on, as it flogged the government for moving away from the consultative process while formulating legislations.
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