The Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) says this coun­try’s Sedi­tion Act should be changed.

This af­ter their leader and pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices’ As­so­ci­a­tion, Wat­son Duke, was charged un­der the law for state­ments he made last No­vem­ber.

Duke was re­leased on $250,000 bail af­ter ap­pear­ing be­fore Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trate Adia Mo­hammed yes­ter­day morn­ing.

In a state­ment on the mat­ter, the PDP said it “is re­solved in fight­ing the sense­less sedi­tion laws that re­main as a ves­tige of our colo­nial past.”

It said the law was “to­tal­i­tar­i­an­ism en­shrined in law” and the Gov­ern­ment was us­ing it “to hush the mouth of its crit­ics.”

“We have suf­fi­cient laws to deal with ter­ror­ism, dis­crim­i­na­tion and even trea­son. There is no need for a law that pro­vides the op­por­tu­ni­ty for an op­pres­sive gov­ern­ment to jail you just be­cause you ex­cite mem­bers of the pub­lic to be­come dis­af­fect­ed with the abus­es of said gov­ern­ment.”

It ques­tioned why for­mer As­sem­bly­man Hilton Sandy was not locked up in 2013 un­der the sedi­tion law for state­ments he made then.

“If Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Duke was be­ing sedi­tious for his state­ment of 2018, then Hilton Sandy’s sedi­tious Cal­cut­ta Ship rant must al­so be con­demned and pros­e­cut­ed as such,” the par­ty said.

It said the law pre­vent­ed free­dom of speech.

“It (the law) has every­thing to do with your right to free­dom of speech. That right trans­lates in­to your right to be even damn rude. Such free­dom on­ly comes to a halt for li­bel/slan­der or ter­ror­ism.”

It warned that if the law is not changed oth­er per­sons can be charged.

“Our democ­ra­cy re­quires that we all stand to­geth­er against this ob­scene af­front on our democ­ra­cy. To­day it is Wat­son Duke; to­mor­row will be you,” the PDP said.

The par­ty al­so ex­pressed re­lief that Duke, who is al­so leader of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s Mi­nor­i­ty Coun­cil, had re­ceived bail and pledged that he will con­tin­ue “fight­ing for the dis­ad­van­taged peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

On No­vem­ber 16, 2018, Duke, al­leged­ly said: “We must be pre­pared to die, folks, You know why? This is your be­lief, this is your fam­i­ly, and I am send­ing the mes­sage clear, let Row­ley them know that the day they come for us in WASA, we are pre­pared to die and the morgue would be pick­ing up peo­ple.”