Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les and for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith have crit­i­cised Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der’s re­cent sug­ges­tion that Gov­ern­ment con­sid­er new laws tar­get­ing peo­ple who share con­tent on so­cial me­dia.

Their com­ments came in re­sponse to Alexan­der’s state­ments re­gard­ing pub­lic re­ac­tion to the po­lice killing of Joshua Sama­roo and in­jury to his wife, Ka­ia Sealy, in St Au­gus­tine.

CCTV footage of the in­ci­dent, which showed Sama­roo with his hands raised as of­fi­cers fired at him, went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia, prompt­ing wide­spread out­rage and pub­lic com­men­tary.

Ad­dress­ing re­porters on Wednes­day, Alexan­der said ev­i­dence was cru­cial and ac­knowl­edged the po­lice could have re­leased it soon­er. How­ev­er, he stressed the im­por­tance of the rule of law and cau­tioned on how such ma­te­r­i­al is shared pub­licly.

“Look­ing at it from this an­gle, some­thing needs to be done with those who do that, in terms of the law. You can­not put things out there, get pub­lic opin­ion on on­ly what they saw for two min­utes or a minute and a half, and then draw a con­clu­sion. The time has come for that to change, and there must be law to ad­dress it. That might be the next an­gle we’re look­ing at.”

His re­marks sparked con­cern among cit­i­zens, who in­ter­pret them as a threat to free­dom of speech.

Gon­za­les said Alexan­der “does not un­der­stand en­trenched con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and free­doms” or the oblig­a­tion of pub­lic bod­ies, such as the TTPS, to be trans­par­ent.

“He doesn’t grasp that those in high of­fice are ac­count­able to the pub­lic and are not im­mune from jus­ti­fi­able crit­i­cism,” Gon­za­les said. “If he did, he would not have made such an out­ra­geous state­ment.”

Grif­fith echoed the crit­i­cism, say­ing, “The min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for the se­cu­ri­ty of the coun­try wants a law to re­strict cit­i­zens’ free­dom of speech sim­ply be­cause they ex­pressed an opin­ion based on a video. We reach.”

Grif­fith al­so ref­er­enced Alexan­der’s pre­vi­ous ac­tions, in­clud­ing an at­tempt to in­flu­ence US visa ap­provals for cit­i­zens who crit­i­cised him.

“high­ly in­ap­pro­pri­ate” and rem­i­nis­cent of “East­ern Eu­rope in the 1950s.”

He added, “It is al­so im­prop­er for a min­is­ter to an­nounce plans to draft leg­is­la­tion with­out the Prime Min­is­ter’s or Cab­i­net’s ap­proval. He has a lot to learn.”