Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

In what is be­ing de­scribed as a win for the me­dia and free speech by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, the Privy Coun­cil ruled that for some­one to be charged with sedi­tion in T&T, the State will have to prove that the per­son or pub­lished speech in­cit­ed vi­o­lence or pub­lic dis­or­der.

At a press con­fer­ence at Lak­sh­mi Girls’ Hin­du School in St Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj said the in­ter­pre­ta­tion came af­ter an Oc­to­ber 12 Privy Coun­cil rul­ing on a con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge of the sedi­tion law in T&T by Vi­jay Ma­haraj on be­half of his late fa­ther, for­mer Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha sec­re­tary gen­er­al Sat­narayan Ma­haraj.

“This is one of the most land­mark de­ci­sions in Trinidad and To­ba­go be­cause the Gov­ern­ment could have used the sedi­tion act to op­press the me­dia, to op­press free speech. It would be very easy if the Gov­ern­ment had con­trol of the pros­e­cu­tion process, and I mean any gov­ern­ment, to be able to use the sedi­tion act to ha­rass the me­dia,” he said.

Ma­haraj said while the Privy Coun­cil on Oc­to­ber 12 ruled that it could not ex­am­ine the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the sedi­tion law in T&T be­cause it is ex­ist­ing law and was saved, the Privy Coun­cil de­cid­ed that un­der com­mon law it could de­ter­mine if the de­f­i­n­i­tion of the law met com­mon law re­quire­ments. He said the Coun­cil ruled that the sedi­tion law did not meet the re­quire­ments of com­mon law, so it ruled that proof of in­ten­tion of vi­o­lence or pub­lic dis­or­der was re­quired.

“If ac­tion has to be tak­en with re­spect to those state­ments that Mr Sat Ma­haraj made now, it would be un­law­ful for the po­lice to do it.

“So that the state­ments Mr Sat Ma­haraj made, al­though peo­ple may dis­agree with it, did not con­sti­tute sedi­tion and there’s no de­ci­sion that says it con­sti­tutes sedi­tion. But the most im­por­tant part of this de­vel­op­ment of the law is that if the po­lice want to use this sedi­tion law, they can­not on­ly sat­is­fy them­selves as to what is in the statute in black and white, but they al­so have to sat­is­fy the in­ten­tion to cause vi­o­lence or pub­lic dis­or­der.

“And if they can’t sat­is­fy that, they wouldn’t have a war­rant, they wouldn’t have a pros­e­cu­tion, as you would have seen the judges in even di­rect­ing ju­ries would tell the ju­ry that if you don’t have that, you can­not prove the of­fence,” Ma­haraj said.

Go­ing for­ward, ac­cord­ing to the se­nior coun­sel, even if you use in­flam­ma­to­ry state­ments against a Prime Min­is­ter, Op­po­si­tion Leader or any­body, as long as you do not in­cite vi­o­lence or pub­lic dis­or­der, there is no crim­i­nal of­fence. He said, how­ev­er, there may be a civ­il ac­tion still for defama­tion.

He al­so be­lieved that fol­low­ing the rul­ing, there ex­ists room for peo­ple charged with sedi­tion to pos­si­bly take le­gal ac­tion against the State.

“If it falls with­in four years—if what hap­pened or the vi­o­la­tion or the search of the prop­er­ty oc­curred with­in the last four years, you will have a cause of ac­tion be­cause you al­ways have to file ac­tion with­in four years of the event on which you re­ly up­on to bring the ac­tion ei­ther in tort, neg­li­gent or it’s a con­sti­tu­tion­al right. We don’t have a lim­i­ta­tion rule, but if you wait too much, you can be de­nied re­lief, but the fact that this de­ci­sion was giv­en in 2023, if there’s a con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion, a court would be hard-pressed to hold that there is a de­lay be­cause it’s on­ly re­cent­ly de­cid­ed that they may have a right to go to the court. So the an­swer is yes if it falls with­in the lim­i­ta­tion pe­ri­od of four years,” he said.

Vi­jay Ma­haraj took the mat­ter to the Privy Coun­cil af­ter the Court of Ap­peal over­turned High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad’s de­ci­sion to strike down as­pects of the leg­is­la­tion, which he ruled were un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

Sat Ma­haraj filed the law­suit af­ter po­lice ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants on the SDMS’ me­dia house Cen­tral Broad­cast­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (CB­SL) af­ter he made a se­ries of in­cen­di­ary state­ments on his Ma­ha Sab­ha Strikes Back pro­gramme on TV Jaagri­ti on April 15, 2019.

Ma­haraj claimed that cit­i­zens liv­ing in To­ba­go are lazy and la­belled the men as rapists.

While no crim­i­nal charges were brought against him or CB­SL, he sug­gest­ed that such was in­evitable while ad­dress­ing sup­port­ers dur­ing SDMS In­di­an Ar­rival Day cel­e­bra­tions that year.

In 2019, po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots Wat­son Duke, then PSA pres­i­dent, was charged with sedi­tion. The charges against him were dropped in Jan­u­ary 2020.