DEREK ACHONG

A so­cial me­dia ac­tivist has threat­ened to sue over reg­u­la­tions re­lat­ed to the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Vishal Per­sad, who is the ad­min­is­tra­tor of the blog Mil­lenials for Change, made the threat in a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo and act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Stu­art Young on Wednes­day.

In the cor­re­spon­dence ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Per­sad’s lawyer, Keron Ramkhal­whan, stat­ed that his client was on­ly con­cerned with Reg­u­la­tions 12, 14, and an as­so­ci­at­ed sched­ule which deals with pub­lic or­der.

The afore­men­tioned reg­u­la­tions pro­hib­it peo­ple from in­flu­enc­ing pub­lic opin­ion in a man­ner like­ly to be prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty and or­der and em­pow­er the po­lice to ar­rest, de­tain, and charge al­leged of­fend­ers.

If even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed, of­fend­ers face a max­i­mum penal­ty of a $100,000 fine and five years im­pris­on­ment.

“The In­tend­ed Ap­pli­cant is of the re­spect­ful view that while ro­bust mea­sures may be re­quired to treat with a pub­lic emer­gency, such pow­ers should be pro­por­tion­ate, nec­es­sary, and lim­it­ed to pow­ers which are re­quired to treat with the spe­cif­ic pub­lic emer­gency,” Ramkhal­whan said.

Ramkhal­whan, who is rep­re­sent­ing Per­sad with Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, sug­gest­ed that the spe­cif­ic reg­u­la­tions were un­law­ful and un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

“We re­peat, the In­tend­ed Ap­pli­cant is NOT chal­leng­ing the need for a State of Emer­gency or the re­main­ing reg­u­la­tions that have been pro­mul­gat­ed,” he said.

Ramkhal­whan sug­gest­ed that the in­clu­sion of the words “pub­lic or­der” was ex­ces­sive and could cap­ture triv­ial acts that could not be re­gard­ed as prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty.

“In oth­er words, the term pub­lic or­der could be wield­ed by the Ex­ec­u­tive as a broad sword to cut down the cit­i­zens’ rights to se­vere­ly crit­i­cise the Gov­ern­ment and/or the Ex­ec­u­tive through free­dom of speech,” he said.

Stat­ing that Reg­u­la­tion 12(a) specif­i­cal­ly seeks to pro­hib­it speech, Ramkhal­whan said: “In­deed, in the hands of an overzeal­ous po­lice of­fi­cer, a cit­i­zen could be ar­rest­ed or de­tained for mere­ly crit­i­cis­ing the Gov­ern­ment and/or the po­lice ser­vice for its han­dling of crime.”

He claimed that the Court of Ap­peal was crit­i­cal of sim­i­lar reg­u­la­tions in law­suits, which were brought by for­mer de­tainees dur­ing the last SoE in 2011.

“The Court con­sid­ered sev­er­ing the term from the reg­u­la­tions, how­ev­er, by the time the mat­ter was de­ter­mined (in 2024), the reg­u­la­tions were no longer in ef­fect,” he said.

Ramkhal­whan claimed that the in­clu­sion was not rea­son­ably jus­ti­fi­able based on the aims of the SoE.

“The core prob­lem—vi­o­lent crime fu­elled by gang ac­tiv­i­ty and armed con­fronta­tions—re­quires fo­cused, tar­get­ed mea­sures, rather than the broad crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of mi­nor pub­lic or­der breach­es,” he said.

Ramkhal­whan gave the par­ties un­til next Mon­day to re­spond be­fore he files a case on his client’s be­half.