Trinidad: State to appeal sedition ruling – AG

(Trinidad Guardian) The state will ap­peal Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad’s sedi­tion rul­ing, as At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al Rawi has claimed the rul­ing could have a rip­ple ef­fect with se­ri­ous im­pli­ca­tions con­cern­ing oth­er in­her­it­ed laws from our colo­nial past.

“I’ve in­struct­ed the state’s at­tor­neys, to take an ur­gent and im­me­di­ate ap­peal and asked for an ex­pe­dit­ed hear­ing at the court of ap­peal for this par­tic­u­lar mat­ter,” said Al Rawi in a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

“Be­cause of the prece­dent that it would set on every saved law that ap­plies in this coun­try. Be it the law that al­lows cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, to be pun­ished by death by hang­ing or be it the law that pro­tects se­cre­cy pro­vi­sions in the in­land rev­enue act. In the in­come tax leg­is­la­tion. Sec­tion four, for in­stance, says there is strict con­fi­den­tial­i­ty etc so this law has wide-reach­ing con­se­quences. The judge­ment has wide-reach­ing con­se­quences and it must be ap­pealed as a mat­ter of im­me­di­a­cy and as a mat­ter of im­por­tance,” he said, ex­plain­ing that the rul­ing could cause these oth­er laws which were saved laws from pre-in­de­pen­dence could be struck out on sim­i­lar grounds.

Al Rawi said while he ac­knowl­edged the call for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form made by Jus­tice Seep­er­sad in the judge­ment, he said the law still had an ef­fec­tive us­age in our post-monar­chy democ­ra­cy.

“The judge re­ferred us to the fact that we have no longer have a monar­chy and in­stead the coun­try was ef­fec­tive­ly ruled by the peo­ple. I want to re­mind that this coun­try has in its his­to­ry ri­ot-us con­se­quences which are much more than pre-in­de­pen­dence ri­ots. In 1990, we saw the at­tempt­ed coup in Trinidad and To­ba­go and we can­not for­get our past. We al­so have to be very mind­ful of where the di­vi­sion be­tween free­dom of ex­pres­sion comes against main­tain­ing law and or­der,” he said.

The AG read the ex­cerpt of the late Sat Ma­haraj’s state­ment which prompt­ed the sedi­tion charge and raised the ques­tion as to where the line of free­dom of ex­pres­sion should be drawn giv­en the po­ten­tial of vi­o­lence.

“This case sim­ply en­cap­su­lates where we are as a so­ci­ety be­lieve where the line ought to be drawn. It is im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that free­dom of ex­pres­sion has lim­its,” he said.

This par­tic­u­lar case em­bod­ies the par­tic­u­lar dis­cus­sion in our so­ci­ety as to what is the di­vid­ing line be­tween law and or­der.”

“This judge­ment to­day is one that has to be ap­pealed, must be set­tled by the high­est court which is the privy coun­cil and I just want to alert the coun­try that the gov­ern­ment strict in­ter­pre­ta­tion, strict rule is that there must be an ex­pe­dit­ed hear­ing of an ap­peal. We will ap­ply for that and fi­nal­ly that it is to be set­tled by no less a court than the privy coun­cil,” he said.