The Liberian Senate has shut down its membership and leadership chat rooms to prevent leakages of information.The Presiding Officer for Tuesday’s session, Maryland County Sen. Dan Morais says the leadership of the Senate took the decision to shut down the chat rooms in the wake of leaked information from the controversial impeachment trial of former Associate Justice Kabineh M. Ja’neh.
Chat room is an area on the Internet or other computer network where users can communicate, and this is now common among peers in different social or political status for easy transmission of messages nowadays.
Sen. Morais says the two chat rooms will remain closed until further notice.
He says there needs to be rules and regulations to govern the Senate chat rooms so that information can’t be leaked out.
According to Sen. Morais, documents were leaked to the public during the just – ended impeachment trial of former Justice Ja’neh by some members [of the Senate], though he fails to disclose their names.“Mark Zuckerberg that created Facebook can control it so we should be able to control our chat rooms,” Sen. Morais says.
Sen. Morais acknowledges that the leadership of the Liberian Senate was aware of the opening or creation of the social media platforms, but [they] did not institute appropriate guidelines to control them.
Meanwhile, the leadership of the Senate has set up a three-man committee, including Senators Augustine Chea of Sinoe, Dr. Henrique Togbah of Bong, and Daniel Naatehn of Gbarpolu to formulate rules that would govern and control the upper Houses’ social media platforms.
According to Sen. Morais, the three-man committee will provide the rules that must be followed.
While the rules are still being formulated, he says the chat rooms remain closed.
The Maryland County Senator indicates that Senators use the chat rooms to discuss serious national issues before coming to plenary.
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He notes that no member from the Senate should take information from the chat rooms to give it out to anyone until it is officially given out to the public.
By Ethel A. Tweh –Edited by Winston W. Parley
