Cou­va South Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Rudranath In­dars­ingh has joined to cho­rus of voic­es con­demn­ing the sedi­tion charge laid against Pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Wat­son Duke.

In­dars­ingh, in a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, crit­i­cised the de­ci­sion of Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) Roger Gas­pard to in­struct the po­lice to charge Duke, la­bel­ing it “a frontal at­tack” on “the en­tire Trade Union Move­ment its Lead­er­ship and mem­ber­ship.”

In­dars­ingh said “the PSA Pres­i­dent was mere­ly stat­ing a po­si­tion that work­ers of WASA must be pre­pared to die in de­fence of their jobs and their fam­i­lies’ well-be­ing and as a for­mer Trade Union Pres­i­dent him­self, he can find noth­ing in Duke’s state­ment which can or should be termed as sedi­tious or bor­dered on sedi­tion.”

In­dars­ingh asked, “How it is that a state­ment at­trib­uted to Duke, which was made some ten months ago, is now be­ing act­ed up­on and termed as sedi­tion?”

The Cou­va South ques­tioned the tim­ing of the ar­rest, giv­en that it came less than a week af­ter the PSA Pres­i­dent was crit­i­cal of the Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments on the pub­lic ser­vice.

“Are we wit­ness­ing a reign of ter­ror and dic­ta­tor­ship…any­one who dares to speak out will be ar­rest­ed and pros­e­cut­ed?” he asked in the re­lease.

In­dars­ingh said, “He is ex­treme­ly wor­ried and con­cerned that the next move of this Ad­min­is­tra­tion will be to take away the rights of Work­ers and Union to en­gage in peace­ful march­es and demon­stra­tions—The right to as­sem­ble.”

Since Duke has been charged, there has been re­newed calls for the sedi­tion law to be amend­ed or re­pealed. On Sat­ur­day, the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go called on the gov­ern­ment to re­peal the 99-year-old law which they ar­gued was in­com­pat­able with cit­i­zen’s con­sti­tu­tion­al to right of free­dom of ex­pres­sion.

They said, “1920 law im­pos­es re­stric­tions on cit­i­zens’ ex­er­cise of free speech that are so low and sweep­ing in an in­de­pen­dent, 21st Cen­tu­ry democ­ra­cy as to ren­der all ci!zens vul­ner­a­ble to crim­i­nal charges.”

Dean of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Law Fac­ul­ty in St Au­gus­tine, Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, as well as po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Raf­fique Shah spoke out against the law fol­low­ing Duke’s ar­rest.

Ear­li­er this year, Sanathan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Sat­naryan Ma­haraj filed a con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge of the law af­ter po­lice twice went to the of­fices of the Ra­dio & TV Jaagri­ti seek­ing record­ings of the Ma­ha Sab­ha strikes back. Po­lice had said they ex­e­cut­ed the first search war­rant un­der Sec­tion 13 of the Sedi­tion Act, Chap­ter 11:04. Since Duke’s charge, both Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young have said they had no in­ten­tion to change the law in the com­ing fu­ture.