KUALA LUMPUR: Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail (pix) today defended the Pakatan Harapan (PH) administration’s move to repeal the Anti-Fake News Act 2018.
Ahmad Fadhli Shaari (Pasir Mas-PAS) had questioned if revoking the Anti Fake News Act was a right move, opining that the spread of wrong information on social media is a cyber crime.
In her reply at the Dewan Negara today, Wan Azizah said that existing legislation were sufficient to deal with this.
“We are not taking a backward step in scrapping the act (Anti-Fake News). There is no need for an anti-fake news law. We have the mechanism to tackle fake news. We don’t need a new legislation. We are making amendments to existing laws to deal with such issues,“ she said.
The act was passed by the previous Barisan Nasional administration just before the 14th general election.
Pakatan Harapan which was then the opposition was critical of the anti-fake news law, claiming that BN would use it to silence critical news reports and views against the administration.
Meanwhile, Dr Tan Yee Kew (Wangsa Maju-PH) asked what the government was doing to boost Malaysia’s capability to deal with cyber threats.
Wan Azizah said the national cyber security agency (Nacsa) was spearheading the effort to tackle cyber security issues and that measures to address the problem will be introduced by the middle of this year.
