Attorneys: It was Sat's dying wish to take sedition law case to Privy Council

IT was the late Maha Sabha secretary-general’s dying declaration that his legal challenge of Trinidad and Tobago’s sedition laws should go to the Privy Council for adjudication.

And his son Vijay and his attorneys intend to do just that.

On Friday, the Court of Appeal overturned a judge’s ruling which struck down sections 3 and 4 of the Sedition Act.

Speaking at a virtual media conference after the court delivered its decision, Senior Counsel Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, who led a team of attorneys for Maharaj and Central Broadcasting Services Ltd (CBSL) – the parent company of the Maha Sabha’s radio and television stations Radio and TV Jaagriti – said he was confident they will succeed at the Privy Council.

Maharaj insisted that the sedition law was “wide, vague, and uncertain,” and disagreed with the Appeal Court’s ruling that it was not.

He said the sections criminalised freedom of speech and had not been enforced until recently.

Maharaj said Mahatma Gandhi was prosecuted for sedition and many countries of the Commonwealth had amended or completely abolished their sedition laws, including the United Kingdom.

He also said the law would create “a lot of problems” for the media.

Maharaj also said a result of the Appeal Court’s ruling was that if a politician made a speech which is considered to have incited hatred against the Government, then that politician could be charged with sedition.

He said the late Maha Sabha’s head’s reasoning for challenging the validity of the Sedition Act, was his belief that the present sedition laws “nakedly violated the Constitution, rule of law and principles of legal certainty.

“He was not against sedition laws,” the attorney said, adding that Maharaj had also recognised the need to prevent racial or religious divisiveness in TT.

“He believed laws should exist to promote cohesion of society,” Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj said. Speaking for himself, he said while he appreciated the trouble of the Court of Appeal in ruling on the AG’s appeal, the ruling of Justice Frank Seepersad in January last year “was the correct one.”

MP Dinesh Rambally, a member of the Maha Sabha’s legal team and the Hindu body’s legal representative, also spoke on Vijay Maharaj’s behalf.

He said Sat Maharaj was not an ordinary individual, but had fought against discrimination. Rambally referred to past Privy Council judgments initiated by Maharaj and the Maha Sabha involving the Trinity Cross and its radio licence, the latter of which led to the establishment of Radio and TV Jaagriti.

Rambally said Maharaj strongly believed in the the Maha Sabha Strikes Back programme as an avenue to air his views.

It was his statements on that programme that Tobagonians were lazy and the men were rapists that led to a police raid on the station’s offices in 2019.

Rambally said the raids “powered up” Maharaj, who felt once freedom of speech was suppressed, it would “open a whole corridor for the suppression of other rights.”

Ramesh Lawrence Maharajsaid if the Privy Council overrules the Court of Appeal, it will not have a retroactive effect on pending cases.

At present, Jamaat al Muslimeen leader, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr has a pending retrial on sedition charges arising out of an Eid sermon at the Jamaat’s Mucurapo Road mosque in 2005. He applied to have the charge against him discharged, but it was deferred since the Maha Sabha’s appeal was pending.

Soon after Seepersad’s ruling, president of the Public Services Association Watson Duke successfully had a 2018 sedition charge against him discontinued.