DEREK ACHONG

A so­cial me­dia ac­tivist has made good on his threat to sue over reg­u­la­tions for the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) re­lat­ed to pub­lic or­der. 

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing Vishal Per­sad, who is the ad­min­is­tra­tor of the blog Mil­lenials for Change, filed his con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. In the law­suit, Per­sad is specif­i­cal­ly chal­leng­ing Reg­u­la­tions 12, and 14, and an as­so­ci­at­ed sched­ule which deals with pub­lic or­der. 

The reg­u­la­tions pro­hib­it peo­ple from in­flu­enc­ing pub­lic opin­ion in a man­ner like­ly to be prej­u­di­cial to pub­lic safe­ty and or­der and em­pow­er the po­lice to ar­rest, de­tain, and charge al­leged of­fend­ers. 

If even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed, of­fend­ers face a max­i­mum penal­ty of a $100,000 fine and five years im­pris­on­ment. “It would be wrong for the Ex­ec­u­tive to re­gard the Reg­u­la­tions as giv­ing it unchecked abil­i­ty to tar­get and de­tain in­di­vid­u­als for mere triv­ial acts, hav­ing re­gard to the con­test of the term ‘pub­lic or­der’ as used in the Reg­u­la­tions,” at­tor­ney Keron Ramkhal­whan, of Ju­risX Cham­bers, said. 

He not­ed that when the SoE was de­clared by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo late last year, it (the SoE) was based on an in­crease in the spate of vi­o­lent crime be­ing com­mit­ted by crim­i­nal gangs. “There is no ma­te­r­i­al be­fore to ev­i­dence a re­al risk of vi­o­lent as­sem­bly, or wide-scale ri­ot to jus­ti­fy the spe­cif­ic pow­ers giv­en to ar­rest per­sons in re­la­tion to en­dan­ger­ing pub­lic or­der,” he said.

He claimed that the reg­u­la­tions were not “care­ful­ly tai­lored” based on the sit­u­a­tion iden­ti­fied by the Pres­i­dent. Ramkhal­whan al­so point­ed out that the reg­u­la­tions did not clear­ly de­fine the pa­ra­me­ters of the of­fences and no train­ing was pro­vid­ed to po­lice of­fi­cers. Through the law­suit, Per­sad is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions against the reg­u­la­tions and an or­der re­mov­ing the words “pub­lic or­der” from them. 

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, at­tor­ney Kiel Tak­lals­ingh said that he and his col­leagues were ea­ger for the case to be con­sid­ered by a judge. 

“Any mat­ter in­volv­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to free­dom of speech, ex­pres­sion and as­sem­bly is an im­por­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al claim, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing an elec­tion year,” he said. “How much those rights should be cur­tailed dur­ing a state of emer­gency is a mat­ter of law and pro­por­tion­al­i­ty and my team and I look for­ward to a ju­di­cial de­ter­mi­na­tion on this mat­ter,” he added.Per­sad is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Kristy Mo­han. 

Ear­li­er this month, at­tor­ney Dayadai Har­ri­paul threat­ened le­gal ac­tion over a gun amnesty in the reg­u­la­tion. The Cab­i­net then re­moved the pro­vi­sion which was in­clud­ed for pre­vi­ous SoEs in­clud­ing in 2011.