Shal­iza Has­sanali

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan on Fri­day ap­pealed to the Op­po­si­tion to sup­port the Li­bel and Defama­tion Amend­ment Bill 2013, stat­ing it was the right thing to do.Ram­lo­gan said the Gov­ern­ment was proud to be as­so­ci­at­ed with this "par­tic­u­lar leg­isla­tive mea­sure" be­cause af­ter 169 years, the PP Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing to abol­ish ma­li­cious crim­i­nal defama­tion, which he de­scribed as a step in the right di­rec­tion, aimed at ad­vanc­ing a bet­ter re­la­tion­ship be­tween the State and the me­dia.

How­ev­er, Diego Mar­tin North/East Colm Im­bert in re­sponse to Ram­lo­gan in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives said, "We must be very care­ful in this Par­lia­ment about what we do. Once it is done, it is im­pos­si­ble to re­verse it."The bill seeks to re­peal Sec­tion 9 of the Li­bel and Defama­tion Act, con­se­quent­ly abol­ish­ing the of­fence of ma­li­cious defam­a­to­ry li­bel.The ex­ist­ing Sec­tion 9 im­pos­es a fine and one year of im­pris­on­ment on a per­son con­vict­ed of ma­li­cious­ly pub­lish­ing any defam­a­to­ry li­bel.

Im­bert said the coun­try would not see a fu­ture Par­lia­ment if the Gov­ern­ment tam­pers with the leg­is­la­tion.Im­bert said in the last three years, the Gov­ern­ment had ex­pressed anger about things that were pub­lished in the news­pa­pers.Im­bert said in March of 2013, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar at­tacked rogue el­e­ments in the me­dia. The PM, Im­bert said, claimed the me­dia was not be­ing fair to the Gov­ern­ment on the re­port­ing of its achieve­ments.

Im­bert said stud­ies showed that 158 coun­tries still had crim­i­nal defama­tion laws of some kind.Ram­lo­gan cit­ed the phone hack­ing scan­dal in Unit­ed King­dom, which re­vealed that the press was not as free and in­de­pen­dent as the British cit­i­zen­ry thought, since the press op­er­at­ed not on­ly with a po­lit­i­cal agen­da, but a po­lit­i­cal vendet­ta. He said while no gov­ern­ment in T&T had moved to charge or pros­e­cute a jour­nal­ist un­der this law, there have been some ir­re­spon­si­ble jour­nal­ists.

On the flip side, Ram­lo­gan said by and large the press has been self-reg­u­lat­ing by pub­lish­ing cor­rec­tions; he praised this.Ram­lo­gan said in many coun­tries the me­dia can take a hard line po­si­tion and "beat up on you un­til they com­plete­ly bury you."