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Friday, July 11, 2025

Kam­la de­fends Sat in Man­ning at­tack

A courageous fighter, warrior

by

20160715

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says it is very dan­ger­ous for Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to ac­cuse one of T&T's lead­ers Sat Ma­haraj of sedi­tion.

Ma­haraj has been un­der at­tack af­ter he called the late Patrick Man­ning a racist a week af­ter his fu­ner­al.

Ad­dress­ing sup­port­ers at the launch of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress screen­ing in Siparia yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Biss­esar said, "I think it is very dan­ger­ous for a PM to speak about sedi­tion.

"It is one of the few of­fences in this coun­try that is pun­ish­able by jail with­out bail. One is mur­der, one is charge for pira­cy on the high seas and the oth­er is sedi­tion."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said peo­ple were en­ti­tled to free­dom of speech.

"In this coun­try, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly we are en­ti­tled to free­dom of speech un­less our free­dom of speech breach­es the law. Then we are free to speak and there­fore the PM com­ing to at­tack Mr Sat Ma­haraj yes­ter­day (Thurs­day) not on the rea­son­ing he gave, not on the sub­stance of his ar­gu­ment but in an at­tempt to cre­ate fear to talk about sedi­tion," she added.

Call­ing Ma­haraj "a coura­geous fight­er and a war­rior," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, "Ma­haraj like any oth­er per­son in this coun­try is en­ti­tled to his opin­ion and he has like every­one else has free­dom of speech."

"The ques­tion the PM should be ask­ing is did he speak the truth or did he lie? Did he speak the truth when he said that Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed was shut down by the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion? Is that truth or not true? Did he speak the truth when a PNM sup­port­er got a ra­dio li­cence with­in a day where­as the Ma­ha Sab­ha had to go through courts right up to the Privy Coun­cil to get law­ful­ly a ra­dio li­cence?"

Say­ing she will not put the la­bel as racist, Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, "I am not go­ing in­to that to­day be­cause I be­lieve in this coun­try every creed and race must find equal place and there­fore I am not go­ing in­to the la­bel of racist. What I am say­ing is whether the ex­am­ples that Mr Ma­haraj gave were true?"

She al­so said to dis­tort the re­al­i­ty of what hap­pened in T&T must nev­er hap­pen.

Ad­mit­ting that Man­ning did a great job as the prime min­is­ter, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Row­ley should not use the word sedi­tion light­ly.


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