EDITORIAL - Some revisions needed

As of this writing, President Rodrigo Duterte has yet to sign Senate Bill 1083, also known as the Anti-Terror Bill, into law. However, it is already causing furor among various sectors who say that if the bill is passed into law it can easily be used as a weapon to go after critics of the government or practically anyone who says anything negative about it, even if done constructively.

Some lawmakers assured that the bill doesn’t consider criticizing the government as terroristic activity. And indeed Section 4(e) of the third reading copy of the bill has a part that specifically mentions terrorist acts “shall not include advocacy, protest, dissent, stoppage of work, industrial or mass action, and other similar exercises of civil and political rights, which are not intended to cause death or serious physical harm to a person, to endanger a person’s life, or to create a serious risk to public safety.”

However, there are still those who can’t help but shudder at the vague definitions of the word “terrorist”.

Under Section 3(l) a terrorist “shall refer to any natural person who commits any of the acts defined and penalized under Sections 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 of this Act.”

What are some of the terrorist activities?

Under Section 4(a) “acts intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to any person, or endangers a person’s life.”

Under (c) “acts intended to cause extensive interference with, damage or destruction to critical infrastructure.”

Under (e) those who “seriously destabilize or destroy the fundamental political, economic, or social structures of the country, or create a public emergency” are also considered to have committed terrorist acts.

These definitions are dangerously and widely open to interpretation, and this is just one of the worries of different sectors regarding this bill.

In a perfect world, enforcers stop to look at the law and study it carefully before making arrests, but we all know this doesn’t happen. And we also know that in this country there have been so many instances of the powerful using the law to go after their enemies. Then there are those instances of the law applying only to those who aren’t privileged or those who aren’t close to the power-that-be.

The overall intent of the law is good, as it aims to help the government fight terrorism better, but there are just some provisions that are too ambiguous for comfort. To prevent complications, headaches, and --most of all-- abuses in the future, this bill should undergo revisions before it is signed into law.