DEREK ACHONG

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing so­cial ac­tivist David Welch have giv­en Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith un­til 6 pm to­day to re­con­sid­er his de­ci­sion to refuse Welch per­mis­sion to host a mo­tor­cade protest from Debe to Port-of-Spain, to­mor­row.

In a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent ear­li­er to­day and ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Welch's lawyer Rhea Khan chal­lenged Grif­fith's de­ci­sion, which was made on Tues­day and re­ceived by them at 11 am to­day.  The lawyers are re­quest­ing that the top cop re­con­sid­er his de­ci­sion be­fore they file a law­suit over the is­sue.

"Hav­ing re­gard to the con­tents of your cor­re­spon­dence and to the clear and un­am­bigu­ous pro­vi­sions of the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act, your re­fusal is un­law­ful, ul­tra vires the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act and spe­cif­ic pro­vi­sions there­in, dis­pro­por­tion­ate (in that it un­fair­ly re­stricts our client's con­sti­tu­tion­al rights) and ir­ra­tional as the de­ci­sion is with­out ba­sis," Khan said.

Khan not­ed that her client was aware that Grif­fith had pub­licly stat­ed that he would not grant per­mis­sion for mo­tor­cades while pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions were in place to ad­dress the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and craft­ed his ap­pli­ca­tion based on it.

"Our client, there­after, pre­pared his ap­pli­ca­tion and with­in same in­clud­ed con­di­tions of the protest to the ef­fect that there would be no con­gre­ga­tion of per­sons phys­i­cal­ly and fur­ther per­sons would re­main in their cars, masked and lim­it­ed to three per­sons per ve­hi­cle," Khan said.  She al­so not­ed that the pro­posed mo­tor­cade was sched­uled to fin­ish at 6 pm to en­sure par­tic­i­pants re­turn to their homes be­fore the start of the 9 pm cur­few.

Khan not­ed that the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency, which pre­scribes the cur­few, does not pre­clude a mo­tor­cade protest.

"There is no ex­plic­it reg­u­la­tion or rule un­der the State of Emer­gency Reg­u­la­tions which pre­vents per­sons from pro­ceed­ing along the pub­lic road­way in pro­ces­sion, re­main­ing in their ve­hi­cles, as a form of protest," she said.

Khan cit­ed a le­gal prece­dent in a case from the Hong Kong Supreme Court, which she said dealt with a sim­i­lar le­gal pro­vi­sion in that coun­try's laws and states that the right to peace­ful protest in­volves a du­ty of a gov­ern­ment and au­thor­i­ties to en­able such peace­ful demon­stra­tions.

"We adopt the sen­ti­ments of the Ho­n­ourable Court and com­mend them to you for your con­sid­er­a­tion," Khan said.

On Tues­day, David Welch of Hi­ron­delle Street, Mor­vant, was ar­rest­ed by po­lice out­side the Red House in Port-of-Spain, as he was on his way to de­liv­er the let­ter seek­ing per­mis­sion for the mo­tor­cade to the Po­lice Ad­min­is­tra­tion Build­ing.

Welch was able to cap­ture footage of his ar­rest on his phone and post­ed it live on so­cial me­dia.

He was charged sub­se­quent­ly with re­sist­ing ar­rest and us­ing in­sult­ing lan­guage, as well as be­ing is­sued with a tick­et for al­leged­ly fail­ing to wear a face mask in pub­lic as re­quired un­der on­go­ing pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions.

Al­though Welch was charged on Tues­day evening, he re­port­ed­ly was al­lowed to ac­cess sta­tion bail from a Jus­tice of the Peace on Wednes­day, af­ter his at­tor­neys threat­ened to take le­gal ac­tion over his pro­tract­ed de­ten­tion be­fore be­ing al­lowed to face a ju­di­cial of­fi­cer.

Welch, who is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and Ste­fan Ramkissoon, is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a mag­is­trate to an­swer the charges in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber.