Richard Lord

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing amend­ing the law of defama­tion. This was re­vealed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the In­ter­na­tion­al Press In­sti­tute's World Con­gress at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann's.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the IPI met with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and as a re­sult the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed "to re­view our defama­tion laws to bring them in line with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tice." She did not elab­o­rate. Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Caribbean Me­dia Work­ers, Wes­ley Gib­bings in his ini­tial com­ment on the de­vel­op­ment told the T&T Guardian: "I think this is a very pos­i­tive move." He said T&T can be the re­gion­al leader on that is­sue.

"The re­al test would be to see where this will now re­side on the par­lia­men­tary agen­da." He said sim­i­lar sig­nals have come from two Cari­com states-Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica-with­out any de­ci­sive out­comes. The IPI has been seek­ing a re­view of laws gov­ern­ing crim­i­nal defama­tion among mem­ber na­tions.

Mean­while, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment "to en­sure the ex­er­cise of one's free­dom at no time rep­re­sents an im­pinge­ment of an­oth­er's free­dom." Dur­ing her brief ad­dress on Tues­day night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar stressed the need for jour­nal­ists al­ways to strive to be re­spon­si­ble in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties.

Pres­i­dent of the Pub­lish­ers and Broad­cast­ers As­so­ci­a­tion Ki­ran Ma­haraj said the Le­gal Af­fairs Min­istry will col­lab­o­rate with TTP­BA to host a se­ries of ses­sions fo­cus­ing on the me­dia and the law. At the end of the for­mal part of the event, a gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial told lo­cal jour­nal­ists they had to leave the me­dia event to re­ceive a boxed din­ner, while the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia feast­ed in the ball­room. The lo­cal jour­nal­ists ig­nored the sug­ges­tion and re­mained in the main area, where they en­gaged in con­ver­sa­tions with their over­seas col­leagues.