The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al will have to wait a while longer be­fore it learns whether or not the Ap­peal Court has agreed to sus­pend a re­cent judge­ment, which struck down as­pects of this coun­try's colo­nial-age sedi­tion leg­is­la­tion. 

Ap­pel­late Judge Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon re­served her judge­ment on the is­sue af­ter hear­ing sub­mis­sions from lawyers for the AG's Of­fice and rel­a­tives of for­mer Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Sat­narayan Ma­haraj, at the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. 

The ap­pli­ca­tion to sus­pend Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad's judge­ment, pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the sub­stan­tive ap­peal over it, was heard in cham­ber with on­ly at­tor­neys for the par­ties be­ing al­lowed in­side. 

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi stayed true to his word and chose not to lead his of­fice's le­gal team for the hear­ing, as sug­gest­ed in jest by one of Ma­haraj's lawyers Jagdeo Singh, af­ter Seep­er­sad's judge­ment, last month. 

In his judge­ment, Seep­er­sad ruled that the law could not be pro­tect­ed from ju­di­cial re­view un­der the con­sti­tu­tion­al sav­ings clause as it is vague, un­cer­tain and can lead to ar­bi­trary ap­pli­ca­tion.

He al­so ruled that the leg­is­la­tion is not com­pat­i­ble with a sov­er­eign de­mo­c­ra­t­ic state as it lim­its con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to free­dom of thought and ex­pres­sion and free­dom of the press.

In its ap­peal, the AG's Of­fice has raised 29 grounds of ap­peal over al­leged er­rors made by Seep­er­sad in his analy­sis of the case. 

Short­ly af­ter the judge­ment, Pub­lic Ser­vices' As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke ap­plied to have his sedi­tion charge dis­missed. Last week, Chief Mag­is­trate Maria Bus­by-Ear­le-Cad­dle up­held the ap­pli­ca­tion.

The sedi­tion charge against Duke re­lat­ed to state­ments on pro­posed lay­offs at TSTT, T&TEC, and WASA, which he made in a press con­fer­ence on No­vem­ber 16, 2018. 

Ja­maat-al-Mus­limeen leader Yasin Abu Bakr, is al­so cur­rent­ly fac­ing a sedi­tion charge over an Eid-ul-Fitr speech at his or­gan­i­sa­tion's Mu­cu­rapo Road mosque on No­vem­ber 4, 2005. 

His lawyer Wayne Sturge made a sim­i­lar ap­pli­ca­tion when his case came up for case man­age­ment, yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

How­ev­er, High Court Judge Maria Wil­son ad­journed her de­ci­sion on the is­sue to next week. 

In the event that the AG's Of­fice is suc­cess­ful in its ap­pli­ca­tion, the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) may in­struct that Duke be recharged and may con­tin­ue its pros­e­cu­tion of Bakr. 

Ma­haraj's fam­i­ly is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, Ste­fan Ramkissoon and Rhea Khan. The AG's Of­fice is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Fyard Ho­sein, SC, Josephi­na Bap­tiste-Mo­hammed and Sean Julien.