GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Sen­a­tor David Nakhid says the Gov­ern­ment may be fac­ing a pos­si­ble law­suit from Cana­di­an YouTube Vlog­ger Christo­pher Hugh­es, bet­ter known as “Chris Must List,” who has been charged un­der the Sedi­tion Act for al­leged­ly pub­lish­ing a sedi­tious au­dio/video pub­li­ca­tion on so­cial me­dia.

The charge was laid un­der sec­tion 4(1)(c) of the Sedi­tion Act.

How­ev­er, Nakhid says de­spite be­ing charged, he be­lieves Hugh­es will walk free.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the UNC’s me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day Nakhid said, “He (Hugh­es) is go­ing to get off be­cause the act speaks to the in­tent to in­cite and fa­cil­i­tate one com­mu­ni­ty against an­oth­er. If that is the case, I think Fitzger­ald Hinds should be charged with sedi­tion when he said that we should dri­ve a dag­ger in­to the heart of the UNC and then some­one spoke about Cal­cut­ta ship in To­ba­go. I think those are more sedi­tious state­ments than any­thing Chris Must List did.

“...I think we can ex­pect due process to take place in our coun­try and I think what this Gov­ern­ment can pos­si­bly ex­pect is a law­suit from Chris Must List.”

Nakhid not­ed that not on­ly has this coun­try’s in­ter­na­tion­al im­age been tar­nished by Hugh­es’ de­ten­tion, but said such an ar­rest was al­so a threat to democ­ra­cy.

“We just have to look at the sheer hypocrisy of it. We have peo­ple com­ing here and com­ment­ing on food, tourism, our beach­es and Car­ni­val. Were they pros­e­cut­ed in this man­ner? All Chris Must List did was em­bar­rass the Gov­ern­ment by show­ing the re­al­i­ty that ex­ists in T&T,” he said.

He added, “I think the Gov­ern­ment’s treat­ment of Chris Must List was no dif­fer­ent than how they bul­lied our in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions.”

Since Hugh­es’ ar­rest, many of his fel­low YouTu­bers have ex­pressed con­cern that his life was in pos­si­ble dan­ger.

On whether he agreed with this, Nakhid said not on­ly Hugh­es’ life was at risk but so too was every­one in T&T, giv­en the on­go­ing crime sit­u­a­tion.

Re­gard­ing those in the videos bran­dish­ing high-pow­ered weapons, who some clas­si­fy as “hard­ened crim­i­nals”, Nakhid said it was “not em­pir­i­cal­ly true” to say this.

In­stead, he called for more op­por­tu­ni­ties for “black and In­di­an boys” from per­ceived chal­lenged com­mu­ni­ties.

“What we have are peo­ple that are des­per­ate, that doesn’t mean they are hard­core,” he said, not­ing that those in the videos ap­pear to be around 19 and 20 years.

“What does that mean? That means (Kei­th) Row­ley has been in pow­er for nine years and they would have been 10, 11, 12 when Kei­th Row­ley and this PNM Gov­ern­ment came in­to pow­er so he has cre­at­ed this. The PNM, be­cause of their lack of ideas, has cre­at­ed gang­sters. To say that they are hard­core crim­i­nals, you don’t get hard­core crim­i­nals at 19, 20 and 21.”

While ad­mit­ting the UNC has been very strong on its “stand your ground pol­i­cy” and has been ad­vo­cat­ing for more guns for law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, Nakhid in­sist­ed, “We have to look at these peo­ple, these black and In­di­an boys in the hills that over­look us as our chil­dren. They are part of the body politic. They are part of the body of T&T. We just can’t say they’re hard­core crim­i­nals or leave them like that.

“...We have to look at them first­ly as hu­man in a hu­man­i­tar­i­an way, how we can pre­vent them from get­ting in­to the pe­nal sys­tem.”

Nakhid al­so ac­cused the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and the Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of Com­merce be­ing to­tal­ly mis­guid­ed in their ap­proach in deal­ing with crime in that con­stituen­cy.

He said in­stalling cam­eras in Tu­na­puna is not enough.

“We are look­ing at a more re­ac­tionary way of the TTPS in Tu­na­puna and the Cham­ber of Com­merce deal­ing with crime in­stead of go­ing to the root of the crime,” Nakhid said.

In­stead, he sug­gest­ed they ex­am­ine why there was a lack of avail­able jobs, as well as en­sur­ing fund­ing for ed­u­ca­tion, and hav­ing ac­cess to health­care in Tu­na­puna.