Derek Achong

Po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tivist Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj has threat­ened to take le­gal ac­tion over the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS)’s en­force­ment of the Gov­ern­ment’s on­go­ing “Stay-At-Home” guide­lines for the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. 

Ma­haraj’s lawyer Dou­glas Bay­ley made the threat in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al yes­ter­day.

In the let­ter, Bay­ley re­peat­ed­ly not­ed that the guide­line and a se­ries of re­cent­ly pub­lished pub­lic health or­di­nances did not give the TTPS the law­ful au­thor­i­ty to stop cit­i­zens and or­der those, who they (the po­lice) be­lieve are not es­sen­tial work­ers, to re­turn home. 

“The point is that un­der the cur­rent le­gal frame­work, the TTPS is over­step­ping its law­ful func­tion by ques­tion­ing per­sons as to where they are go­ing and their rea­son for be­ing on the road. The po­lice can­not en­force Gov­ern­ment poli­cies and guide­lines but rather the law,” Bay­ley said, as he sug­gest­ed that po­lice could at­tempt to use moral per­sua­sion but not threat­en to ar­rest per­sons al­leged­ly in breach of the guide­lines. 

Bay­ley not­ed that dur­ing this month, Ma­haraj, who is from Curepe but lives in San Fer­nan­do, was stopped and or­dered to re­turn home on three oc­ca­sions. 

The first in­ci­dent al­leged­ly oc­curred around 11 am on April 7, while he (Ma­haraj) was dri­ving along Har­ris Prom­e­nade in San Fer­nan­do on his way to drop a meal for a friend. 

Last Fri­day, Ma­haraj was al­leged­ly stopped in Ch­agua­nas dur­ing one of sev­er­al road­blocks, which took place across T&T and af­fect­ed thou­sands of cit­i­zens in­clud­ing es­sen­tial work­ers. He in­formed po­lice of­fi­cers that he was head­ing to his girl­friend’s house to col­lect a meal and he was or­dered to re­turn home. 

The last in­ci­dent al­leged­ly oc­curred around 7 pm on Mon­day while Ma­haraj was on his way to a gas sta­tion to fill gas and use an ATM. Bay­ley not­ed that in each of his ac­tiv­i­ties when he was stopped, Ma­haraj had no in­ten­tion of breach­ing the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions, which large­ly deal with gath­er­ing in groups in pu­bic and the op­er­a­tions of busi­ness­es deemed es­sen­tial and non-es­sen­tial. He al­so claimed that Ma­haraj had a mask, gloves, and hand sani­tis­er. 

“It is equal­ly clear that the TTPS has con­flat­ed the re­stric­tions un­der the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions, such as the clo­sure of non-es­sen­tial busi­ness­es with the right of a cit­i­zen to leave his/her home. In no way does the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions re­strict the abil­i­ty of a cit­i­zen to leave their home,” Bay­ley said. 

While Bay­ley stat­ed that Ma­haraj was not op­posed to mea­sures to help pro­tect cit­i­zens from the spread of the virus, he not­ed that they must be le­gal and con­sti­tu­tion­al in na­ture. 

“It is im­per­a­tive, even in times of na­tion­al cri­sis, that the rule of law must be up­held, and the Con­sti­tu­tion, which is the sa­cred and supreme law of the land, must be para­mount,” Bay­ley said. 

Bay­ley not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment chose to not in­voke seg­ments of the Con­sti­tu­tion re­lat­ed to a State of Emer­gency (SoE), which would law­ful­ly al­low for the in­fringe­ment of cit­i­zens’ rights in sev­er­al cir­cum­stances in­clud­ing dur­ing an out­break of an in­fec­tious dis­ease. 

Bay­ley said the ac­tions by po­lice in the ab­sence of an SoE breached his and oth­er cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to lib­er­ty and free­dom of move­ment. 

“Fur­ther, based on the clear and dis­tinct in­ten­tion by the TTPS to con­tin­ue, and in­deed to in­crease, its en­force­ment of these non-ex­is­tent laws, our client’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights are like­ly to con­tin­ue to be vi­o­lat­ed as peo­ple are now fear­ful of leav­ing their homes to go out,” Bay­ley said. 

In the let­ter, Bay­ley re­ferred to sev­er­al news­pa­per re­ports in which the health reg­u­la­tions and TTPS’s ac­tions were ad­dressed by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith. 

It al­so con­tained quo­ta­tions from re­tired Unit­ed King­dom (UK) Supreme Court Judge and Privy Coun­cil mem­ber Lord Jonathan Sump­tion, who heav­i­ly crit­i­cised the en­force­ment of sim­i­lar “stay-at-home” di­rec­tions in his coun­try. 

Sump­tion said: “This is what a po­lice state is like. It’s a state in which the gov­ern­ment can is­sue or­ders or ex­press pref­er­ences with no le­gal au­thor­i­ty and the po­lice will en­force min­is­ters “wish­es”

Through the threat of a law­suit, Bal­go­b­in is seek­ing a clear and un­qual­i­fied ad­mis­sion for the breach of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and an un­der­tak­ing to clar­i­fy via press re­lease that the po­lice have no pow­er to en­force the guide­line. 

While Bal­go­b­in’s lawyers ini­tial­ly gave the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al un­til mid­day yes­ter­day in which to re­spond to the let­ter be­fore they file the law­suit, they agreed to ex­tend the dead­line to this morn­ing af­ter the So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s Of­fice re­quest­ed ad­di­tion­al time to re­spond. 

Bal­go­b­in is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, and Renu­ka Ramb­ha­jan.